


Recreational Breaking and Entering

by LerxstInSpace



Series: Breaking and Entering [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: AI Cait Sith, Alcohol, Established Reno/Rude, Flirting, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Reno being Reno, Unexpected Visitors, Workaholic Reeve Tuesti
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LerxstInSpace/pseuds/LerxstInSpace
Summary: When you reach a certain rung on the Shinra corporate ladder, you start hearing rumors. Rumors that if one or more of them takes a liking to you, you’ll come home from work one day and find Turks just hanging out in your living room, probably drinking your beer and eating your snacks.It was the “if they take a liking to you” part Reeve was having a hard time wrapping his brain around right now, because... one or more oftheseguys? Had taken a liking tohim?He’d only previously spoken to one of them long enough forhimto be the one that took the liking, and, well...None of this sounded right, but Reeve didn’t know where to even begin to dispute it.
Relationships: Reno & Reeve Tuesti, Reno/Rude (Compilation of FFVII), Tseng/Reeve Tuesti
Series: Breaking and Entering [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160927
Comments: 20
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

“You sure about this, boss?”

“Should I not be?”

“Well... I mean... corporate bigwig?”

“And?”

“And... we generally don’t target the corporate bigwigs?”

“Generally.”

“Because... the corporate bigwigs have this annoying tendency to like... _not appreciate it?”_

“His assistant is concerned. She specifically asked that we pay him a visit.”

“Shit. Okay. Fine, just... shit. Elevator. Is that him?”

“No.”

“Okay. ...boss, c’mon, what’s the holdup? He’s gonna see us and he’s gonna bolt.”

“He's got some kind of custom encryption on his lock, the usual stuff isn't working. But his assistant said he mentioned picking up some groceries after work. We’ve got time.”

“Huh. He’s good.”

“Mmhm.” The door clicked open. "But not good enough."

_“Yesss._...damn, nice place. You got the kitchen?”

“Yep.”

"Cool. I got--"

"Hands in your pockets, Reno."

"Aw! I'm not gonna break anything! On purpose, anyway? C'mon, partner, back me up here!"

“Oh _hell_ no.”

It _was_ a nice place. Spacious, good view, decent location. Thick plush carpet in the living room, wood or something that looked enough like it in the kitchen. Tasteful, comfortable-looking leather sofa and recliner in the living room. A few throw pillows. Coffee table, with a few magazines and coasters and assorted knick-knacks on it. Bookshelves...

"Let's see here--"

_"Reno."_

"What!? I am _looking._ With my eyes. ... hoo. Way above my pay grade. Cool models, though?" 

...mostly full of various arcane engineering and architecture and programming books, with a few novels here and there and one or two very old fantasy roleplaying game rulebooks. There were a few model cars as well, plus a small 3D-printed figurine of... well, what the hell _was_ that? Some kind of prehistoric Moogle with a cat riding on its shoulders? Whatever it was, it was all neatly arranged and free of dust, just like everything else in the living room. 

All of it, very nice. 

Not as nice as their target could afford on his paycheck, though.

He drove a nicer car than most people, but not nearly as nice as he could surely afford. He wore fairly expensive suits that fit him well enough, but he clearly bought them off the rack. 

He was thirty. Single. Never married. Still plenty of time for that, but according to his very concerned assistant he didn’t have much of a social life outside of work. His mother lived in Sector 5; he had dinner with her every Sunday. He went to the gym most mornings. He lingered on the 63rd floor some evenings, sitting in one of the comfortable chairs with his laptop and a cup of coffee and something to graze on, sketching or typing or tinkering with an assortment of design software. He was sometimes seen in the R&D fabrication shop on the weekends. Other than that...

“Jackpot.”

“Ooh? What’cha got?”

There were two distinct soft hissing-clinking noises, and Rude leaned out of the kitchen doorway, two open bottles of cold beer in hand. “Brand new six-pack.”

_“Yesss._ That oughta last us... a couple minutes? Give.”

“Boss?”

“No, thanks.” Tempting, but... “You know the rules.”

“Yeah, yeah. More for us. He got any food in there?”

“Kinda. Some snacks and stuff in the pantry, but most of what he’s got needs cooked.”

_Hmm._

That recliner could wait a few minutes.

Like the rest of the apartment, the kitchen was spacious and clean. Granite counters, stainless steel appliances, the usual extras--coffee maker, microwave, toaster, blender, and so on. All of them were spotless, but clearly used on a regular basis. An array of steel cookware hung from a rack over the island--again, clean but regularly used. There was a well-seasoned cast iron skillet on the cold stove. Too heavy to hang on the rack, too frequently used to stow in a cabinet. There was a good chef’s knife in a plastic scabbard laid on a heavy wood cutting board on the island. Both showed the same telltale signs of age, use, and care.

He could cook. He could eat at any upscale restaurant in Midgar he wanted, whenever he wanted, if he wanted. He cooked for himself instead.

There was a pattern here. 

Near the coffee machine sat an assortment of bottles--aspirin, cold medicine, antacids, the standard array of over-the-counter remedies. Nothing that required a prescription. There was a bottle of daily multivitamin pills, half full, and a bottle of melatonin gummies, less full. 

All right. The recliner had waited long enough. 

It was comfortable. Very comfortable. Probably the most-used piece of furniture in the room. There was a small table at its right arm. Lamp, a few more magazines, remote, and a strange thing that looked like some kind of phone dock. Homebrew, but _good_ homebrew. It clearly had some kind of special function, but the sleek housing offered no clues other than a cryptic logo on the front: a cat-shaped head topped with a little crown. 

“Hey,” Reno said, sinking onto the couch (and partly onto Rude) with beer in hand. “You think he--”

There was a noise at the door. Some rustling. Something that might have been a lukewarm _ah, dammit._ The soft beep of the keycard reader.

Reno shut up. And watched the door. And looked a bit like he wished he had a tub of popcorn.

The door opened. The target backed in with two armloads of bags. Gave the door a firm shove with his foot to shut it. Turned around, presumably with the intention of heading for the kitchen to put his groceries away...

...and then froze where he stood, looking like nothing so much as a deer laden with groceries staring into a pair of headlights as he took in the scene: three very off-duty Turks relaxing in his living room, two of them on his sofa drinking his beer, the third in his recliner with the footrest up.

“Wh,” he squeaked, and Reno cracked up. Even Rude couldn’t quite keep a straight face. 

Normally, they’d draw this part out a little longer, because it was fun to watch the target squirm. But he _was_ carrying an awful lot of groceries and even worse, it looked like he might be starting to lose his grip on--

“Oh shit! I got it!” 

Reno didn’t even have to be told. He was off the sofa, diving for the falling bag, possibly before the target even noticed he’d lost it, catching it neatly and carefully before it hit the floor. Good thing, too. He pulled a carton of eggs out of the bag, flipped it open, and inspected the contents. “Whew! All present and accounted for, sir. No casualties. Where d’ya want ‘em? The fridge?”

“Um. Yeah, I--fridge? I guess? _”_

“‘Kay. Hey, Rude? C’mon, help the man out here.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Rude took another drink of his beer, put it on a coaster like a decent human being (and put Reno’s beer on a coaster like a decent human being), and got up to help. “Here. I got that.”

“Thanks...?” The target shook his head as Rude relieved him of some of his baggage, as if to knock some cobwebs out of it. “Why? _Why this.”_

“Director Tuesti.” All right. They’d had their fun. They owed the man an explanation. “I don’t know if you remember, but I came by your office the other day.”

“Ah--oh. Tseng, right? Yeah, of course I remember, but--”

And now even Tseng was finding it difficult to keep a straight face. “I was told you’d been warned this might happen?”

“W--well--” The Director puffed out an incredulous laugh as Reno came back in to relieve him of the rest of his groceries. “I--I _heard_ this was a--oh, uh... thanks? But I didn’t expect you to actually--” He gestured helplessly, indicating the whole ridiculous scene he’d come home to. _“Me?”_

“Why not you?”

“I heard you only did it to, you know...” Was he blushing? It was hard to tell at that distance, but he did look just a little redder in the cheeks and ears than he did when he came in. “People you liked.”

Interesting.

“I just figured... ah, never mind, it’s--it’s okay. It’s--” He laughed again, shaking his head. “It’s fine. This is absolutely not how I was expecting to spend my Friday night. Or... any night. Ever. But it’s fine. Do you want a beer too, or--”

Yes, he was definitely blushing a little. “No, unfortunately. Designated driver and adult supervision for...” Tseng inclined his head towards the kitchen. “Those two. Mostly Reno.”

“Uh, boss? _I can hear you_.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, Lord Business? Where do you want the not-food stuff?”

“Just on the--Lord Business, that’s a new one. On the island for now, I guess? I can deal with it later, just--I feel bad that you’re putting my groceries away for me.”

“Island. Gotcha. Hey, if you feel that bad you can come put _our_ groceries away next time.”

“Reno.” Tseng tried once more not to look amused. He wasn’t sure it was working. He wasn’t sure how much he cared if it wasn’t. Rude came back in, sat back down, and didn’t even try to look like he wasn’t amused. “Don’t be an ass.” 

“But boss, I don’t know how else to be.” Reno came back into the living room and flopped onto the sofa, right up against Rude’s side. “Ain’t that right... _partner?”_

The utter disregard for Rude’s personal space. The way Reno leaned on the word _partner_ like he wanted to make absolutely sure everyone who heard him knew damn well it was a double entendre. The way he closed his eyes and leaned into the little kiss Rude planted on the side of his head. The arm Rude draped over his shoulders. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Tseng usually tried to discourage them from engaging in too much of that on their first visit to any given target’s place but this time...

Call it professional curiosity.

All right... maybe not so much the “professional” part.

The Director’s reaction was not at all what he expected. It was like someone pulled a cork out of the man and let the tension out of him. His shoulders relaxed. That vaguely terrified expression he’d been wearing since the moment he came in the door and found his living room full of Turks dissolved. Something inside him just seemed to sort of uncoil at the sight of Reno and Rude cuddling on his sofa.

_Very_ interesting.

“I’m, uh...” This time, when he laughed, there was none of that nervous brittle edge. “You mind if I...” He plucked at the lapel of his suit jacket. “Go put some human clothes on?”

“You’re asking us?” Tseng raised an eyebrow. “It’s your apartment, Director--you know what, I have a feeling I’m in your seat, I should--”

“No, no, it’s fine, I can--my computer chair is kind of uh, ridiculous, it's--” He shook his head. “God. You know what, you’re in my apartment, there’s beer, we’re all off the clock, just--just call me Reeve. Please.”

* * *

Well, Tseng wasn’t wrong... he _had_ been warned, hadn’t he?

When you reach a certain rung on the Shinra corporate ladder, you start hearing rumors. Rumors that if one or more of them takes a liking to you, you’ll come home from work one day and find Turks just hanging out in your living room, probably drinking your beer and eating your snacks. 

It was the “if they take a liking to you” part Reeve was having a hard time wrapping his brain around right now, because... one or more of _these_ guys? Had taken a liking to _him?_ He’d only previously spoken to one of them long enough for _him_ to be the one that took the liking, and, well...

None of this sounded right, but Reeve didn’t know where to even begin to dispute it. 

He didn’t personally know anyone who’d gotten a visit like that. Of course he’d heard the usual friend-of-a-friend stories, but nothing firsthand. And up until his most recent promotion, his path never really crossed that of any of the Turks. They’d passed in the halls a couple of times, maybe. They might have shared an elevator a few times, even exchanged some small talk while their paths happened to be pointed the same direction.

It wasn’t until he’d moved into his ridiculously overhuge and fancy new office on the 63rd floor that he actually properly met any of them. Tseng just happened to be taking care of some business up there, and Reeve guessed he just happened to notice a new name on the door and decided to introduce himself.

He’d been all business that day. Sharp black suit and tie, shiny black shoes that undoubtedly concealed steel toes, black leather gloves, and an expression that reminded Reeve of nothing so much as an ice sculpture. He’d kept his gloved hands clasped behind his back for most of that visit, an ever so slightly looser version of a military parade rest. He was very much on duty, and Reeve could hear it in every word he spoke and see it in every step he took. 

He was not too proud to admit that he found Tseng a little intimidating. 

All right, maybe more than a little intimidating.

Still, that handshake was firm and decisive but it wasn’t a test of strength the way some handshakes on this floor felt. And the conversation, while short, was pleasant enough. Reeve didn’t come out of it feeling like he’d made a new friend, but even as intimidating a figure as Tseng cut he didn’t feel like he’d been threat-assessed or tested or scrutinized or anything like that either. He certainly didn’t feel like he’d ended up with a mild crush on the guy (even if he did spend a little too much of that afternoon thinking about that _hair,_ good God).

Maybe, Reeve thought as he stood there with his arms full of groceries, staring at the man in his recliner, maybe he _had_ been tested a little.

And maybe, just maybe, he _did_ make a new friend. Because the Tseng in his apartment right now was a completely different person than the one who introduced himself the other day.

This Tseng was softer around the edges. Warmer. More relaxed. He smiled. He _laughed._ He was fascinating to talk to; he seemed to know at least a little bit about almost everything and he asked questions that indicated a genuine interest in learning more. He talked with his hands, especially when the conversation took turns he seemed to find interesting. 

His hands. _That_ was the biggest difference. 

He was still wearing that suit, even if he had undone the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie a little. He was still wearing those shoes. But he wasn’t wearing his gloves. The hands now on display were graceful, with long nimble fingers and short, perfectly trimmed and filed nails, and...

And, if Reeve was being completely honest... 

_Oh hell,_ he thought as he dropped his phone into Cait’s dock and went back to the kitchen to help himself to another slice of the pizza he’d had delivered because he didn’t have enough of anything to cook a decent meal for four and another beer from the twelve-pack he’d had delivered because one six-pack was not going to last him, Reno, and Rude very long, _let’s just call a spade a spade here, huh?_

Maybe he _did_ end up with a little bit of a crush, because this Tseng was the most gorgeous man Reeve had ever seen in his entire life.

And he was right here. In Reeve’s living room. In his recliner. Acting for all the world like he had a genuine interest in getting to know Reeve better outside of work.

Which still didn’t sound right, but he still didn’t know where to even begin to dispute it. So he figured he might as well roll with it for now. It wasn’t like he had any other plans for tonight, right?

And on top of that... well, of course he’d heard the rumors about Reno and Rude. At his level _everyone_ had heard those particular rumors, but the few times Reeve had ever actually seen them in the flesh they’d been much like Tseng had been in his office that day. All business. Now here they were, on his couch, as affectionate and relaxed as if they were hanging out at an old friend’s house. That helped, actually. It helped a lot, seeing the two of them acting like a perfectly normal couple, knowing there was at least one thing he wouldn’t have to worry about while they were over.

(never mind the fact that there was absolutely nothing normal about the fact that he just came home from the grocery store and found three of the most intimidating people in Midgar relaxing in his living room, what the _hell_ even was his life right now!?)

As he slid another slice of pizza onto his plate, he glanced over the assortment of not-food Reno and Rude had temporarily staged on the island and... ah, dammit.

“Hey, uh...” Reeve leaned out the kitchen doorway. “There weren’t any paper towels in any of those bags, were there?”

“Mmm... nope? Don’t remember any,” Reno said around a mouthful of pizza. “You?”

“Nope,” Rude repeated.

“Well, shit. Hey, Cait?” 

All right.

Later, it will occur to him that what he did then could, understandably, have been taken as him showing off for guests. But the truth is, it’s just what he does when he’s home, it’s second nature by now, and he honestly didn’t even remember there was an audience until Cait’s hologram popped up on his dock and Reno nearly choked on his pizza.

“Hey boss,” Cait replied, every bit as oblivious to the presence of guests. “What’s up?”

“Can you...” Oh. _Now_ Reeve remembered there were people watching. And now he started to feel a little embarrassed. “Remind me to pick up some paper towels while I’m out tomorrow?”

Cait’s hologram gave him a thumbs-up, as he did. “Okay! I’ll remember that.”

“Whoa! What the--” Reno swallowed his pizza and hung over the arm of the couch, eyes and mouth wide open, trying to get a better look. Rude hung not quite over his shoulder and lowered his glasses. “What the fuck is _that!?”_

Without missing a beat, Cait’s hologram turned to look him right in the eyes. “What the fudge are _you!?”_

And Tseng... well, he was sitting right there next to the dock, and he already looked like this was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen (it probably wasn’t, but it kind of did give Reeve a case of the warm fuzzies to see him look like it). But he actually cracked up a little when Reno flailed backwards into Rude’s chest, knocking them both back against the other end of the couch. 

“Well,” Tseng chuckled into his fist, eyes sparkling in a way that gave Reeve even more of the warm fuzzies, “he sure told you. No, but... what _is_ that?”

“Oh...” Reeve cleared his throat and let out a little sheepish laugh. “That’s Cait Sith. He’s my AI assistant.”

“You mean like that thing on our phones that you talk to and it does stuff?” Reno asked, creeping back to the end of the couch closer to Cait’s dock. “Never seen this one. Never seen one with the, uh... hologram thingy, either?”

“You gotta be careful with those,” Rude said, adjusting his glasses. “Never know where they’re sending your data and stuff.”

“Oh, I know _exactly_ where he’s sending it.” Reeve caught Tseng’s eye. Tseng flashed him a hint of a smile and quirked an eyebrow, just enough to let Reeve know he knew exactly where this was going but wasn’t going to spoil it. “I wrote him.”

“Seriously?” Reno wiggled a finger in front of Cait’s face and made _pspspsps_ noises at him. Cait indulged him by batting at his wiggling finger. Of course, being a hologram, Cait’s gloved paws went right through Reno’s finger, but the effect was still amusing. “This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in... like, maybe ever? Oh my God this is the cutest shit, look at him all standing up like a people...”

“Hey, boss?” Cait swatted at Reno’s finger one more time and looked up at Reeve. “How come you guys can say the real F-word and I can’t?”

“Because you’re a cute cartoon mascot,” Reeve answered. “And cute cartoon mascots don’t say those words.”

“Aw, c’mon!” Reno sat back on the couch and took a long pull off his beer. “Let Cait say ‘fuck!’”

“Yeah, boss! Let me say ‘fudge!’”

_Oh God,_ Reeve thought helplessly, _what have I done!?_ “Cait, ignore Reno, he’s a bad influence.”

“Okay! I’ll remember that.”

“Wh--” Reno spluttered, the very portrait of righteous indignation, reaching out to Cait’s hologram like a drowning man reaches for a rope. “Cait! C’mon, man! I thought we were buddies! Hey, Cait! _Pspspsps--_ ”

“My boss says I don’t have to listen to you,” Cait said, turning away to give him a fuzzy but nevertheless cold shoulder. “You’re a bad influence.” Reno sputtered half-syllables and little breathy squeaky noises for a moment. Then he went boneless and flopped over the arm of the couch in utter soul-crushing defeat.

“Here lies Reno.” Tseng demurely pressed one fist to his mouth, shoulders ever so subtly shaking with near-silent laughter. “Viciously murdered by a talking holographic cat.”

“It’s okay, partner.” Rude patted Reno’s shoulder, and even _he_ was clearly having a tough time keeping a straight face. “I still love you.”

“You know what? I don’t have to take this.” Reno made a great show of standing up and snatching his empty plate and beer bottle off the coffee table. “I’m just gonna eat more of your pizza. That you got for us to eat. Yeah. That’ll show you.” And he strutted off to the kitchen in theatrical mock outrage. 

“Need anything else, boss?” Cait asked, as if Reno hadn’t said a word. Which just made the whole spectacle even funnier. 

“No. No, Cait, I’m good for now. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay!” And with that, Cait’s hologram curled up into a cute little sleepy-cat ball and vanished.

“All right,” Tseng said, wiping his eyes, “that’s pretty amazing. And that’s... a hobby of yours?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Reeve sat down on the arm of the couch with his pizza. “I started playing with, you know, chatbots and stuff in college and it just kind of... went from there. It’s just fascinating to watch a machine actually _learn_ things.”

“It really is, I have to admit I know next to nothing about that but...” Tseng reached over and tapped the logo on the front of Cait’s dock with the tip of one of his long fingers. “Why a cat, just out of curiosity?”

“Oh, uh.” Reeve cleared his throat. “I just... like cats. I’ve thought about getting one but... well, long hours and all, it wouldn’t be right to leave a real living thing alone up here all day, so...” He gestured in the dock’s general direction. “There you go.”

“Hey, boss?” Reno called from the kitchen. “You’re a bourbon nerd, right?”

Reeve perked up a little at that.

Was he, himself, an expert? Absolutely not. Did he know what tasted good and why? Well, sure. Did he consider himself to be at least a casual bourbon nerd? Yes.

Did he have one particular bottle on the liquor shelf in his pantry that another at-least-casual bourbon nerd might find _extremely_ relevant to his interests, something that Reno may have found and if not recognized as such a thing, at least thought interesting enough to ask about?

Absolutely.

(Did he have a low-level buzz on and was he, perhaps, just the tiniest little bit giddy at the prospect of having a shared interest in common with Tseng? Oh _hell_ yes.)

He knew before Reno even came out of the kitchen with it, and he bit back any reaction of his own to watch what Tseng said or did about it.

“This any good?” Reno asked, and Reeve watched in something like delight as Tseng’s eyes went wide.

“That’s--” He stared at the bottle in Reno’s hands as if it were a unicorn. “Oh my God, that’s the 40-year. _How?_ ”

“I’m not sure but...” Reeve couldn’t help but grin a little. “I may have gotten the last bottle in circulation?”

“How did you--” Tseng shook his head quickly, as if to clear it, as if he was just remembering whose hands that precious bottle was in. “Reno, _put that back where you found it!”_

“So it’s _really_ good, is what you’re saying.” Reno nodded and turned around. “Putting it back. Very carefully.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tseng laughed, watching him go. “If I’d known you had that I would have told him to stay out of the liquor cabinet but--Reeve, how the hell did you get your hands on that!?”

“Um... long story short...” Reeve answered with a sheepish laugh of his own. “A few years ago when I started making, you know, executive money... my mom told me I should buy one ridiculously extravagant thing just for me so... I watched the auctions, hired a proxy to go bid for me so I couldn’t chicken out, and, well... there you have it. A bottle of Branford that cost more than my first car. Which I’ve barely touched in the what, four years I’ve had it because, y’know, it’s for _special occasions_ \--”

“Oh God,” Tseng wheezed. “I hear you. If I had something like that, it’d probably outlive me. If I were to finish it off I’d have to... I don’t know, hold a wake and a funeral for it.”

“Right? I mean, on the one hand I didn’t pay that much for it just to put it out for show and never drink it like some of the collectors do but on the other... Once a year. On my birthday. That’s about it.” He could see it in Tseng’s eyes, in the way he watched Reno carry that bottle back to the kitchen to put it away. He wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to impose, but he really, _really_ wanted to ask and Reeve was really, _really_ curious as to what he’d think of it, so... “You want to try it?”

“What!?” Tseng sputtered. “God, yes, of course I--no, I shouldn’t. I’m driving.”

“C’mon.” Reno plopped back down on the couch with another slice of pizza and another beer. “It’s Friday night and you got a shitload of pizza in there for a buffer. One shot isn’t going to fuck you up. _Legendary bourbon,_ boss. You really wanna pass on that?”

“He’s got a point.” Rude gave him a solemn nod. 

“...oh, hell.” Tseng threw up his hands, admitting defeat. “All right. Just--just a taste, Reeve, _are you sure about this--”_

“Like I said...” Reeve hopped off the arm of the couch and headed back into the kitchen. “I hardly touch it, I don’t mind at all. How do you take it?”

“Neat, of course.”

“Good answer.” He took the bottle and a glass down off the shelf. After a moment’s thought he took another glass. “I used to work with a guy who’d buy--well, not _this_ expensive obviously but, you know, top-shelf kind of stuff and you want to know how he drank it? In Potion. _Diet_ Potion. I wanted to _strangle_ him.”

“Do you happen to know where he lives?” Tseng ground out from the living room. _“I just want to talk.”_

Reeve poured about a shot in Tseng’s glass and considered his own for a moment. Did this count as a _special occasion?_ Having an unexpectedly fun evening with an apartment full of equally unexpected Turks, one of whom he shared at least one common interest with?

When was the last time he had actual _company_ here, anyway? A friend? Friends, plural? A date?

A date who didn’t leave in a huff when it became clear that he wasn’t going to get what he thought he’d been invited up for?

Maybe, Reeve thought, maybe being targeted for a little recreational breaking and entering was exactly what he needed.

He poured a shot in his own glass and put the bottle away.

It could have been an accident. It probably _was_ an accident. It was quick and light and casual, enough of all of them to be an accident. But when Reeve handed Tseng his glass, he thought he felt just the faintest brush of a fingertip against his own. Reno and Rude were watching all of this, kind of like they were at some kind of sportsball game, but if either of them noticed that particular detail they kept it to themselves.

“You gonna classify this as a religious experience, boss?” Rude asked, sliding his arm around Reno’s shoulders again.

“I might. Even from here it’s--” Tseng held his glass under his nose, breathed in the scent of its contents, and let his eyes drift shut. When he finally brought it to his lips he did not knock back the whole glass at once, like some people might have. He took a decent, respectable sip and held it and _experienced_ it, letting it hold his undivided attention like someone seeing a famous painting in person for the first time would. Then he swallowed. Took a long, slow, contented breath. And opened his eyes. “Well. I can cross _that_ off my bucket list. It’s amazing.” He shut his eyes again and took another little sip. “Caramel and oak, mostly. A little vanilla and... something spicy?”

Reeve took a sip of his own. He shivered a little when it went down, as he always did despite the warmth it left in its wake. “I get a little bit of cinnamon, yeah.”

“That’s it. Mmm.” Tseng finished his shot off. “It definitely lives up to the legend. I’m--to be honest, I’m a little in awe right now. Thank you.”

“Hey, I’m just... I’ve never had anyone over who’d appreciate it like that, so...” Something in Reeve’s brain, some little internal quality control inspector stationed between there and his mouth, quickly sat up and flagged the rest of that sentence for disposal. “Uh, anyway... what’s your usual?”

“Three Magi. Black when I can find it, Gold when I can’t.” 

“Nice.” All right, not Reeve’s favorite, but the man definitely had good taste. “A little smokier than I like, but nice.”

“I like mine to bite back a little. As for you, for occasions not quite as special I’m guessing...” He looked up and... oh, shit.

Okay. Now, Reeve thought, now he was _definitely_ being scrutinized. And the crazy part was, he didn’t mind. Not at all. Not if _that_ was how Tseng was going to look at him while he did it.

“Bismarck Reserve,” Tseng said, and Reeve sputtered out a helpless laugh.

“Not quite,” he said, “but close enough that I have to accuse you of peeking.”

“I promise you I didn’t.” One corner of Tseng’s mouth curled upward, slow and vaguely dangerous. “Then if not the Reserve... Blue Label.”

“No, you definitely peeked before I got home. Or Reno was throwing you signals or something.” This was crazy. This was absolutely crazy and God help him, Reeve was _enjoying_ it. “If you didn’t peek, how’d you guess? C’mon. Show your work.”

“Mmm... maybe another time.” Tseng’s eyes sparkled. He, too, was clearly enjoying this. “Think about it, until then.”

“Hey,” Reno said over his shoulder, probably intending for absolutely nobody in the room but Rude to hear him, “are we watching, like... some kind of weird bourbon nerd mating ritu--”

Without a word, Rude relocated his hand from Reno’s shoulder to his mouth. 

* * *

The pizza was gone. Most of the beer was gone. And the company and the conversation were so interesting and Reeve was enjoying all of this so much that he didn’t even realize what time it was until a massive jaw-cracking yawn snuck up on him. He glanced down at his watch, and... well, hell. 

“Guys,” Reeve said when the conversation finally hit a bit of a lull, “This has been a _very_ interesting evening and I’m not trying to rush y’a--you out or anything--hell, if you want just hang out and turn off the lights when you leave. But I got up way too early this morning and I am slightly drunk and I’m about to fall asleep right here in front of you and none of us would enjoy that.”

“Aw,” Reno protested. “C’mon, lightweight. It’s not _that--”_ And then he looked at his phone. “Wow. Shit.”

“Oh.” Tseng even looked a little surprised at the time. “Oh no. I didn’t realize--no, it’s all right, I completely understand. We should go. Police your area, you two.”

“No, it’s okay, I can--” Reeve kind of didn’t want them to go. “I can get it in the morning.”

(he definitely kind of didn’t want Tseng to go)

“Too late.” Reno, bless him, popped up off the couch and scooped up every empty beer bottle on the table in one fluid motion and hauled them off to the kitchen. There were no shattering noises, just the vaguely musical clinking of bottles being gently deposited in the recycling bin. “We killed ‘em, least we can do is bury ‘em.”

“Well, I think we had such a good time and you were such a good sport about it, I should probably warn you,” Tseng said while he was doing that and while Rude carried their pizza plates into the kitchen, “this will almost certainly happen again. And we all come the first time, but after that we generally don’t. Most likely, you’ll get Reno. Sometimes Rude. Sometimes both of them.” He stood up and God, that _hair,_ Reeve couldn’t really see much of it while he’d been sitting down but-- “I think I’ll have to come visit you again, too.”

“I’d like that.” Reeve offered him a hand to shake, partly out of routine courtesy, partly because he was slightly drunk and Tseng wasn’t wearing his gloves this time and he was not about to miss that particular opportunity. “And you still owe me an explanation.”

Tseng did not make good on that, but he took the offered hand. A flash of something that looked a little like surprise crossed his face, but whatever he noticed, he didn’t seem to dislike it. And maybe it was Reeve’s imagination. Maybe he was, in fact, slightly drunk and wasn’t quite perceiving things as they were. But it seemed, from where he stood, like Tseng held on to his hand maybe a little longer than he really needed to. And maybe he held it a little more firmly than he really needed to. Not the sort of test-of-strength handshake he’d gotten from some people, but... very much the handshake of someone using it as cover. As a reason to...

...but again, well, Reeve was slightly drunk and probably imagining all of that. And maybe projecting a little, if he was being completely honest.

* * *

“Okay, boss. You gonna explain what the fuck all _that_ was?”

Tseng couldn’t help but crack a smile. “What all _what_ was?”

“You know what _what._ That whole bourbon nerd courtship thing you two were doing.” 

“That was not a ‘courtship thing.’ That was friendly bonding over a shared interest.”

“Uh huh. Sure. Friendly, my absolute _ass._ That was flirting, boss. Flirting is what that was. You. Were flirting. With him.” Reno leaned against the wall of the elevator and waggled an eyebrow. “And he was _into it.”_

Rude gave Reno a gentle poke in the ribs. “Hey.”

“What? I just said they’re _obviously_ into each other, I didn’t say he had to acquire a taste for the horizontal tango about it.”

_“Hey.”_ Rude gave him a slightly less gentle poke. “Costs you zero gil to mind your business.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. Sorry, boss.”

“No harm done.” And of course Tseng didn’t take it personally. He knew how Reno was. He knew perfectly well that even sober, Rude was the only filter the man had. 

He also knew Reno wasn’t entirely wrong. 

The more he learned about Reeve... well, the more he _wanted_ to learn. The man was unexpectedly down-to-earth considering his position. Once the initial shock of surprise Turks in his living room wore off, he was an incredibly gracious host. Once he relaxed he was fascinating to talk to, warm and enthusiastic about the things that interested him and a voracious listener--and incredibly intelligent without being a condescending prick about it, unlike some engineer-types Tseng had known. Every once in a while he caught himself slipping into technical jargon and corrected that. Every once in a while he almost said _y’all_ and corrected that too, which Tseng found both interesting and oddly endearing. 

(Tseng thought he was easy on the eyes as well, both in his usual business suit and in that sweater and jeans he’d changed into, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud while stuck in an elevator with a drunk Reno)

His handshake came as a bit of a surprise, though. Tseng had expected his hand to be soft. True, it wasn’t the hand of someone who made his living by hard manual labor, but... definitely not the baby-soft professionally-manicured hand he would expect to find attached to a senior exec, either. 

Clearly, he was an effective manager and good at wrangling his people; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t hold the position he did. But outside of the office, he was different. He seemed shy. A little awkward. He’d blushed a couple of times. He kept his hands to himself, aside from one perfectly ordinary handshake (which, if Tseng was being honest, he may have drawn out just a bit longer than was absolutely necessary). He was almost certainly at least a few degrees off straight, if his reaction to Reno and Rude gently snogging on his couch was any indication. And once or twice, Tseng caught him staring. At his hands, or sometimes at his hair. Normally, he would have said something. There was little that made Tseng more uncomfortable than the gaze of someone who was clearly mentally tearing his clothes off. But that wasn’t what Reeve was doing. There was nothing in his eyes that indicated any unpleasant ulterior motives. 

He was, in every sense of the word, harmless. And maybe “harmless” wasn’t the type of man Tseng usually took an interest in (when he took an interest at all, anyway), but he had to admit it would be a refreshing change of pace.

  
So, again... if Tseng was being honest, he would have no choice but to admit that maybe, just maybe, he _was_ flirting a little.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the hell was happening right now!?
> 
> He’d had his apartment benevolently broken into by three of the most intimidating people in Midgar, who then proceeded to hang out like old buddies until well after midnight. And one of them... one of them was almost certainly flirting with him. And Reeve... was flirting back. And now they had each others’ numbers. 
> 
> What, and he could not stress this enough, the absolute hell!?

_ I should be hung over,  _ Reeve thought when he opened his eyes the next morning. 

And he should have been. Just a little, at least. Because  _ how much  _ beer did he drink last night? With a shot of bourbon on top of it, no less? And how much older was he now than he was the last time he’d done that?

Sure, he was smarter now too. Smart enough to eat something with all that alcohol and then drink a big glass of water and take an extra vitamin before he went to bed.

But he should have had  _ some  _ unpleasant reminder. A headache, or an upset stomach, or even a little bit of cotton mouth. He had none of that.

He felt pretty good, actually. Good enough to hop out of bed at seven-ish on a Saturday morning, throw together a quick breakfast, grab his gym bag and a set of decent Saturday-errand-running clothes, and head out to do the things he needed to do today.

Maybe ...whatever the hell that was last night really was exactly what he needed, and he made a mental note to say that to the first Turk he happened to run into.

(he absolutely was not hoping it would be Tseng.)

(he was a terrible liar and therefore was forced to admit that he absolutely was hoping it would be Tseng.)

* * *

It occurred to Tseng as he drank his coffee and checked his e-mail that he should probably apologize.

They’d stayed far too late and even worse, he didn’t recall Reno or Rude or himself compensating Reeve for drinking most of his beer. Or for the pizza he’d ordered for them. Or even offering to. And he definitely didn’t offer anything in return for the most incredible sip of bourbon he’d ever had in his entire life. 

(if he closed his eyes and concentrated he could still taste it, could still feel the warmth it left in his chest on the way down)

So... yes. The next time their paths crossed, an apology was in order. 

He had some work to do first, though. Nothing life-or-death, but there was an e-mail from Rufus gently and sort of passive-aggressively nagging him about some bit of pencil-pushing nonsense, something he probably  _ could  _ wait until Monday morning for but clearly didn’t want to. It was barely worth getting out of bed this early on a Saturday for, honestly. It would take him longer to shower, get dressed, and drive to the office than it would to actually do the damn thing but, well... best to just get it over with and make the man happy.

There were, after all, worse people to report to in this company. Much worse.

It probably wasn’t strictly necessary for him to do this in uniform, but that was mostly for his own benefit. And it was easier to remove an accessory or two and undo a shirt button to shed his work self than to dress up his civilian wear.

It  _ did  _ take longer to get ready than it did to actually do the damn thing, though. A few forms to be filled out in triplicate, signed, stapled, and deposited in the outbox to be distributed to the right offices. A digital copy attached to a reply to Rufus’ e-mail to further assure him the thing had been done.

The reply to his reply was almost immediate:  _ I didn’t say you had to do that NOW, just today. Not complaining though. See you Monday. By the way, a little bird told me you harassed a certain new Director last night. How’d that go? Given the length and girth of the stick up his ass, I’m going to guess... bad? _

Shit. How did he hear about... never mind. 

_ Actually,  _ Tseng sent back,  _ he enjoyed it. After the initial shock, anyway. We all did. He’s even on board with the idea of having us over again if you can believe that. _

No reply to that seemed forthcoming, so Tseng started to gather his stuff and head out. Then his phone pinged again.

_ That’s a surprise. Maybe he’s not as painfully goddamn repressed as I thought. Or else he’s just that desperate for company. Either way, try not to traumatize him too much. Maybe go ahead and have that little talk with R&R just in case, the last fucking thing I need is the old man calling me out on the carpet over an HR complaint from someone who came home to a couple of Turks grinding on their couch. _

Well... he did have a point.

Tseng sent off one last response assuring Rufus he would handle that, and decided he was done for the day. He stepped into the elevator, started to push the button that would take him to the parking garage, and then just out of curiosity pushed  _ 28  _ instead.

After a moment’s thought, he slipped his gloves off and stowed them in his pocket, loosened his tie, and undid the top button of his shirt.

He had a general idea of where the fabrication shop was. It wasn’t somewhere he visited often... or really, at all. But there were signs he could follow and as he drew closer, he didn’t really need the signs anymore. 

All he had to do was follow the music. It wasn’t especially loud but on an empty floor on Saturday morning, it was loud enough. It was the sort of stuff that would have been on the radio ten or fifteen years ago, danceable and inoffensive but kind of embarrassing to listen to with company over.

That tracked, didn’t it?

When Tseng reached the half-open door of the fabrication shop, he thought for a moment he must have been mistaken and this was someone else in here on a Saturday working on personal projects, someone who just happened to have the same hair and the same build. But no. It was definitely Reeve, just... different.

Last night, he’d changed into nice jeans and a sweater, and he’d looked all right in them. Today, he wore jeans that had clearly been with him much longer than those stiff dark things. These were soft and faded and built for comfort and they weren’t  _ tight,  _ kind of the opposite in fact, but they still somehow fit like he’d been born wearing them. Instead of a sweater, he wore a dark blue and black plaid flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and--

Well. Tseng didn’t know what he’d expected to see, but that kind of definition in the man’s forearms was not it. A gym bag hung on the coat rack near the door and a faint scent of chlorine hovered in the air around it, both of which hinted at an explanation, both of which Tseng filed away in his ever-expanding mental dossier. 

And then there was the way he carried himself. He seemed... lighter. Relaxed, even more than he’d been the night before. Relaxed enough to sing along to whatever guilty pleasure his playlist had chosen for him. He... was not a great singer, Tseng thought with some degree of amusement. Actually, Tseng thought, he was the kind of singer who might get himself chased out of a Wall Market karaoke bar at gunpoint. And, as he did whatever he was doing with one of the machines, he was sort of gently dancing in place in that endearingly awkward way that painfully shy people tend to dance when they think nobody is watching. 

Here, Tseng thought, watching Reeve sing off-key and bop around his various machines, was a man who had found his happy place. He was in his element and all was well and, if just for a little while, the rest of the world could go screw itself.

He still hadn’t looked towards the door.

_ (His situational awareness,  _ Tseng’s work-mind thought grimly,  _ is shit.) _

Reeve finished up whatever he was doing on whatever machine he was messing with, pushed some buttons on the control panel, and watched it start up. Apparently satisfied that it was going to do what he wanted it to, he moved on. Then he unholstered his phone and woke it up. “Hey, Cait?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“Can you order some metal for me? Personal account.”

“Pulling it up, hang on. ...okay, ready. Same as last week?”

“Yep. Oh hey, do they have any mythril rods in stock? Say, about... foot long, half-inch wide or thereabouts?”

“Hang on... they’re out of that length but they’ve got two-foot ones, will that work?”

“Yeah, I can cut it down, should be fine. How about... add two of those on and send it.”

“Hang on... okay! All done. Hey, while I’m awake, don’t forget the paper towels. Hi, Tseng!”

“Right, thanks for the--what? Where’d  _ that  _ come from?” Reeve, bless him, finally turned around. He squawked, backpedaled, nearly dropped his phone, and did a hasty slapdash job of pulling himself together. “Hi! Sorry! I didn’t see you there!”

“You looked like you were working on something delicate,” Tseng said, pushing off the door frame and taking a few steps in as Reeve turned his music down to an acceptable background level. “I didn’t want to startle you. It looks like I did anyway, though.”

“Yeah...” Reeve scratched nervously at the back of his head and breathed out a little laugh. “How, uh... how long were you standing there?”

“Well...” Honesty or mercy... honesty or mercy...

“Long enough, huh?” Reeve sighed, and Tseng gave him an apologetic nod. 

“Not a word to anyone,” Tseng promised. “You looked like you were having fun, so...”

“Yeah, I--oh, hang on a second...” Another machine beeped, and Reeve ducked away to open it up and take something out of it, some kind of shiny metal machine part. “Okay. ...oh, nice, that should do it. Well... come on in and have a seat, if you want? You’ve already seen me acting like an idiot so--”

“I saw no such thing.” Tseng took him up on that offer of a seat. “Like I said. I saw you working on something and enjoying it. Personal project, I take it?”

“Yeah.” Reeve pulled his laptop over and tapped on a few things. “What about you? I thought the Turks usually got weekends off unless...”

“Unless something messy hits the fan, usually, yes. I just had to come in and take care of some administrative busywork, nothing serious. And then I noticed someone moving around in the R&D fab shop on a Saturday morning. So I thought I’d come see if that was you.” Not the exact truth, but close enough. “I owe you an apology for last night.”

“No you don’t.” 

“I kind of do. We usually don’t stay that late, especially the first time. And it occurred to me this morning that none of us even offered to pay you back for all the beer Reno and Rude drank, much less the food or even the--”

“Don’t worry about it.” Reeve shook his head. “God, it’s not like I can’t afford another six-pack.”

“Not the point.”

_ “It was fun.”  _ Reeve sat back in his chair and, for a moment, looked like he might be about to add something to that. Then he laughed softly, like he’d decided against it. “Okay. If you really want to pay me back... how’d you guess what I drink?”

“I told you.” He remembered that. Even better: he was actually trying to figure it out. “Think about it.” 

“I did. And I still don’t get it.” Was he enjoying this? “C’mon.”

“Mmm. No.” The man had an infectious smile, and Tseng couldn’t help returning it. “Maybe another time.”

“You said that last night. It’s another time.” Reeve was definitely enjoying this. Reno wasn’t wrong about that either, was he? “Give me a hint, then.”

Tseng sat back and huffed out an exaggerated breath. “All right... there were a number of little clues which I’ll leave for you to figure out yourself, but... the Branford was what cemented it.”

“The Branford.” Reeve raised an eyebrow. “Really? I don’t think it tastes anything like--”

“It’s absolutely nothing to do with the taste.” They were  _ both  _ enjoying this. “That’s all I’m going to tell you for now. So...” Tseng gestured around them, at the various machines doing their thing. “What are you working on? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Oh, don’t change the--” Reeve let out a deep sigh. “All right, I can see I’m not getting anything else out of you on  _ that  _ subject today. It’s fine. I’m a patient man.” He tapped on his laptop and turned it around. “I’ve never really messed with robotics and I thought it might be a fun thing to dip my toes into, so...” He shrugged. “Figured I’d start small.”

“You’re--” Tseng couldn’t help but laugh as he looked over the sketches and diagrams on the screen, some of which were instantly familiar. “This is for Cait Sith, isn’t it? You have the most  _ fascinating  _ hobbies, how do you end up doing these things for fun?”

“Well--” Reeve turned his laptop back around. Was he blushing? Just a little? Maybe it was just the light. “I just...” He tapped a few more things and closed it. “I like what I do for the company now. I really do. I love being in a position where I can really  _ help  _ people here. I sure can’t complain about the paycheck. But I don’t get to do  _ this  _ part of it anymore and I miss it. I miss designing things. I miss building things. I miss, you know--taking sketches and numbers and measurements and turning them into something I can touch. It’s just... it’s really satisfying to turn some data and raw materials into...” He picked up the part he took out of one of the machines earlier, turning it over in his hands, letting the light play over its meticulously polished surface. “Something...  _ real. _ Something with a purpose.”

Now that Tseng knew what it was meant to go into, he recognized it as half of a ball-and-socket joint. A shoulder or a hip. Something strong, but lightweight--titanium, or maybe mythril. It was incredible, in and of itself. But more than that, hearing Reeve talk so easily about  _ why  _ this interested him... Tseng had the feeling that he’d just gotten a closer look at what kind of a man Reeve was than most people ever would.

He liked what he saw. And, on some level he would not even begin to examine until a few weeks later, that concerned him.

“What about you?”

Tseng looked up, barely aware that he’d been staring at the part, even less aware that he’d been staring at the hands that held it, that created it. “Hm?”

“What do you do for fun?” Reeve set the robot cat part down. “Aside from, you know... recreational breaking and entering? Nice work getting through my lock, by the way.”

“Recreational breaking and--” Tseng sputtered out a laugh, and Reeve looked extraordinarily pleased with himself. “Yes, and your lock  _ did _ slow me down a little. Though now I get the impression you could have done better.”

“You got me.” Reeve shrugged, hands wide and open. “I wasn’t aiming for ‘Turk-proof,’ just something your average burglar wouldn’t be able to download a crack for. But let me know if you want a challenge sometime. I’m not sure I  _ can  _ do ‘Turk-proof’ but I’ll try and make it a little more fun for you.” His eyes sparkled. It was clear that he didn’t want to brag, but just as clear that he knew exactly what he was capable of. 

Tseng liked that too.

“I might take you up on that.” He meant it. When was the last time he’d had to dig even a little deeper in his toolbox than one of those bootleg master keys to force a lock on a friendly break-in? “Well, when I’m not doing that... I like to go see a play once in a while.”

“Really?” Reeve quirked an eyebrow, and something that looked like the closest thing to a dangerous smile the man was physically capable of tugged at the corner of his mouth. “How many times?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that.” Tseng knew  _ exactly  _ what he meant by that, but Reeve was going to have to work harder than that for an answer.

“Yes you do.” No, he definitely couldn’t do a convincingly dangerous smile, but he sure was giving it his best effort, so... all right. Good enough. “How. Many. Times.”

“Fewer than you think,” Tseng replied, coolly. “...and more than I’ll ever admit to.” He tried to keep a straight face and found he couldn’t. Neither could Reeve. “Actually, no, I--of course  _ Loveless  _ is fine but honestly it’s a little slick and overproduced for my taste. I’m not crazy about huge venues like that, either. I like...” He sat back in his chair. “Smaller productions. Community theater, coffee house readings, playwrights with day jobs, that kind of thing. Completely different energy. It’s so much more... intimate.” 

Hmm. Was that really, right now, in this conversation with this particular man, the best word choice? Tseng half expected Reeve to turn red as a beet at that, but he didn’t. If anything, he looked... well, he looked a lot like Tseng felt a few minutes ago, listening to him talk about why he loved spending his Saturdays in this machine shop. “Of course, there’s always a chance you’ll end up sitting through a couple hours of college kids overacting their way through some pretentious twee artsy bullshit one of them wrote while high on--whatever it is that college kids get high on these days. But then again, coffee houses generally don’t charge you a couple thousand gil for a nosebleed seat behind a pole either, so there’s that.”

“Oh God, the  _ pole--”  _ That got an earnest laugh out of Reeve, the kind of helpless laughter that indicated personal experience with the nosebleed pole seats. “I... never would have guessed you were a theater buff.”

“Really?” Tseng leaned in, just a little. “What did you expect, just out of curiosity?”

“I don’t know.” Reeve shook his head and shrugged a little. “I just...” He laughed, soft and sheepish. “I don't know what I expected you to be into. Honestly, I... I wasn’t even sure you  _ did  _ do anything for fun.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” 

“Well... yeah, I guess. You just seemed like... well, one of the scariest people in Midgar. The kind of person that doesn’t do ‘fun.’ Even when you came by my office the other day you were kind of... like that.”

“Ah.” Tseng nodded. “I’m paid very well to be one of the scariest people in Midgar, yes.”

“But you’re not like that now. I mean... I definitely pick up on the  _ potential  _ for it, but... last night, and right now... you're like a completely different person.” There was no fear in his eyes. Just genuine curiosity. 

“I’m off the clock.” Tseng nodded again. “Your line of work is something you can take home with you, if you want to. You have a skill set that can carry over into the things you enjoy. Mine is...” He paused for a while, searching for the right words, searching for the safest words. “Let’s just say... I  _ have _ to leave my work at work. That’s why I put  _ this  _ on--” He gestured in his own direction, indicating his black suit. “--to come fill out a few bits of paperwork. And why I take  _ these  _ off--” He reached into his pocket and drew out his gloves, laying them on the table. “--and loosen this damn tie the absolute second I’m done. It helps me separate my professional life from my personal life. Out of uniform equals off duty.”

He expected Reeve to give him a suspicious sideways glance, to make some comment to the effect that psychology was not one of his specialties but rigidly compartmentalizing one’s existence like that didn’t exactly sound like a healthy way to live.

(He wouldn’t be wrong, Tseng guessed, but... never mind that.)

“Yeah. Okay.” Instead, he just nodded. “I guess that makes sense. Kind of like partitions on a hard drive, so you can run two different operating sys--” He cut off mid-word, shook his head, and let out a little embarrassed puff of a laugh. “Sorry, that’s kind of a silly analogy. I’m good at machines... not so good at people.”

“No,” Tseng said as he thought it over. “It’s not silly at all. There’s the on-duty partition and the off-duty partition, and--no, that’s exactly it. You get it.” He tucked his gloves firmly back into his pocket. “And you’re better at people than you give yourself credit for. You wouldn't be where you are in this company if you weren't.”

"That's different. I can deal with people at work just fine, at least the managing part..." He stared at something insignificant on the table in front of him. "Board meetings scare the hell out of me, though. God, that first one was... I guess it went okay but all I really remember of it was doing my presentation and being so damn terrified I thought I was going to pass out or throw up or both--"

"Were you sitting next to Hojo? He has that effect on people."

“Well, actually--” That did exactly what Tseng hoped it would. It broke the tension he could sense building in Reeve's voice, uncoiled that spring tightening in his head.  _ “Yes!"  _ He dropped his head onto the table, laughing helplessly. "And then afterwards the VP kind of pulled me aside and told me next time just have a shot of whiskey before the meeting, it'd help my nerves and I'd probably still be the most sober person in the room other than him--"

"Ah." Well, that would explain that comment about the stick, wouldn't it? _He's the one you should_ _be afraid of,_ Tseng thought, and almost said, and thought better of saying. "It gets easier, I promise. Never _easy,_ not with that bunch, but in this company any board meeting you can walk away from is a good one." He was only half joking. "As for your off-duty people skills... again, you're better at it than you think. Do you think we would have stayed so late last night if you weren’t?"

Neither of them said anything for a while. And no, that wasn’t the light. Reeve was definitely blushing. 

“I  _ do not  _ accept your apology for last night,” Reeve finally said, in the careful, measured tone of someone who was fighting every instinct that was telling him to keep his thoughts inside his head. “Because it’s not necessary. I... guess it was what I needed. Just to be around some people I don’t work with, just for fun. And I am absolutely okay with it happening again.”

“All right, then.” Tseng considered that for a moment. “Let me give you my number, just in case--if something comes up where you absolutely don’t want any of us over, give me a heads-up. We’ll respect that.”

“Oh? Uh. All right, sure--” Reeve took his phone out. “Actually... I’ll give you mine, just so... if you give me some advance warning, I can feed y’a--you something a little nicer than pizza.”

There it was again. Tseng hoped that if any of his internal reaction made it to his face, and if Reeve noticed that, he would take it in the spirit in which it was intended and not think he was being made fun of. “Now that’s absolutely not necessary,” he said.

But he took Reeve’s number anyway.

* * *

What the hell?

What the  _ hell  _ was happening right now!?

He’d had his apartment benevolently broken into by three of the most intimidating people in Midgar, who then proceeded to hang out like old buddies until well after midnight. And one of them... one of them was almost certainly flirting with him. And Reeve... was flirting  _ back.  _ And now they had each others’ numbers. 

What, and he could not stress this enough, the absolute  _ hell!? _

No, of course he wasn’t the best judge of this, despite what Tseng said he really  _ didn’t  _ think he was all that great at people, so maybe he was reading too much into the situation. But from where he sat, right here, right now, feeling the distinct mental buzz of low-level panic as the reality sank in that he actually had Tseng’s  _ personal  _ number in his phone _ , _ it sure as hell felt like he was being flirted with.

He’d been wrong about that before, though.

And, well... he’d been right about that before. At least none of those lasted long enough for him to get  _ too  _ attached, but...

He knew the odds were not great. He knew it last night. Worst of all, it didn’t stop him from attempting to flirt back a little. 

He meant to get back to work on his project after Tseng left, but... how the hell was he supposed to concentrate now? 

Ah well. Personal projects didn’t have deadlines. So he packed up his stuff, turned off his music, grabbed his bag, and headed home.

But on the way, almost on impulse, he stopped at the liquor store. Just in case.

* * *

He would have forgotten the damn paper towels again if Cait hadn’t piped up just as he was about to pull into the parking garage.

* * *

Just like Tseng said: it happened again.

And it  _ kept  _ happening. For reasons Reeve could not even begin to guess at, his apartment had become a Turk magnet. He wasn’t complaining, not too much.

About once or twice a week, Reeve would come home to unexpected company on his couch. Just like Tseng said, it was usually Reno, and that was... something. 

Reno was chatty and loud and a little obnoxious and he had absolutely no filter and he used the word “fuck” the way most people used punctuation marks and he seemed physically incapable of sitting in a seat like a normal human being and despite all of that... Reeve was starting to like the guy. Sure, he had a vast array of somewhat embarrassing nicknames for Reeve and sure, he occasionally veered off into wildly inappropriate subjects and sure, he generally did not bring his own beer and just helped himself to whatever happened to be in the fridge and sure, if pressed Reeve would have to admit that Reno reminded him of the kind of guy who liked to shove him into a locker in high school. But the thing was... he was never outright  _ mean.  _ There was the occasional gentle roasting, but it always had a weirdly affectionate undertone to it. This was just how Reno bonded with people, Reeve guessed, and after a while he started to get used to it. And then there was the way his eyes would just kind of glaze over a little, the way he’d get this kind of goofy little vacant smile on his face any time Rude happened to come up in the conversation.

A couple of times, Rude showed up.

That was a little uncomfortable at first, because Rude was the exact opposite of his partner. He didn’t talk much, and Reeve worried that  _ he  _ might be talking too much, or that he was being awkward if he stopped talking. But after a while, he got used to that too. Rude didn’t say much but he did nod and make  _ still listening, keep going  _ noises when that was called for, and when he did say something he got right to the point, and when Reeve didn’t feel like talking he didn’t make it weird. They just sat and watched whatever was on TV until something else to talk about came up. If the subject happened to include Reno he softened up a little. He never said it in so many words, and Reeve got the impression that it’d be out of line to prod. But every time Rude so much as mentioned Reno in passing there was something in his tone and in the words he so carefully and efficiently chose that said he loved that man with every fiber of his being.

He also brought his own beer, which was kind of nice.

One time Reno and Rude were both on his couch when he got home. They were just cuddled up together drinking beer and watching TV, and Reeve didn’t think much of it until the next day when he texted Tseng about that visit and got a strange reply:

_ Oh God,  _ Tseng sent back,  _ I completely forgot, I need to talk to them about... well, let’s just say they’ve been known to get a little TOO comfortable in other peoples’ living rooms. _

Reeve didn’t ask what he meant by that. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He was reasonably sure he already knew. He had, after all, heard  _ those  _ rumors too.

Tseng hadn’t come over again, not yet, but that didn’t worry him too much. He was a busy man, after all. And he texted every few days, just to make sure Reno and Rude were behaving themselves when they came over. ...all right, mostly making sure Reno was behaving himself. 

Reeve gently poked him a few times about that explanation he was still owed, though. And every time, he got the same response:

_ Keep thinking about it. _

* * *

And then one Monday night Reeve came home and found Reno lounging on his couch, shoes off, beer in hand.

“‘Sup,” he said, casual as could be, when Reeve walked in.

Reeve hung his jacket up on the coat rack for now, tugged his tie loose, tried not to think about how weird it was that he was starting to get used to certain people breaking into his apartment just for fun, and headed into the kitchen for a beer of his own. “Hey. You by yourself today?”

“Yep.” There was an audible pop on the _P._ “Partner’s getting his annual performance review.” Reno set his beer down on the coffee table and flopped onto his back. “Which is just, y’know. Crossing-I’s-and-dotting-T’s bullshit, we’re all fine, haven’t done too much collateral damage or whatever the fuck lately and it’s not like Tseng or Rufus give a shit what else we do long as we get our jobs done and we totally do _that_ but like... really? We didn’t have fuckall actual work to do all day, you couldn’t do this shit during normal-ass business hours?” He sat up just enough to take a swig of his beer without spilling it, set it back down, and flopped again. “Anyway, he’s stuck there till who the fuck knows when and I’m bored. So here I am.”

Reeve sank into his recliner, dropped his phone into Cait’s dock, and started to take a drink of his beer. Then he paused. “Reno?”

“Yo?”

“Why is there money on my end table?”

“Oh. Yeah, uh. Speaking of collateral damage...” Long, exceptionally uncomfortable pause... and then he burst out laughing. “I’m just fuckin’ with you. That’s for the beer.”

Reeve let out a laugh of his own and tried not to sound too relieved. “I told you, you don’t have to do that.”

“The boss asked us to. Real nice. He even said ‘please.’” Reno flipped over onto his stomach, crawled up to hang over the arm of the couch, and grinned. “Hey, chief. I got a question for you.”

“Oh, shit.” Reeve braced for... something. He didn’t know what, but he could see it in Reno’s eyes and the way he just sort of draped himself over the arm of the couch, could hear it in his voice.  _ Something  _ was coming. 

“What? It’s nothing perverted or anything. God. Just wondering if you’re, y’know, seeing anyone right now. That’s all.” 

“...oh.” Okay. Well, that seemed innocuous enough. The sort of thing normal people asked other normal people in casual conversation, even. “Nope.”

“Wow. Really? Good-looking guy like you? No girlfriend?” Something about the twinkle in Reno’s eyes told Reeve that the man already knew perfectly well he did not currently have, nor had he ever had, nor would he ever have a girlfriend. “Not your thing, huh,” he added, confirming it. 

“Not my thing.” He wasn’t judging or making fun. That much was clear. Reno might not be a  _ safe  _ person in the conventional sense of the word but on this subject, at least, Reeve knew he didn’t have to worry. “Is it that obvious?”

“Honestly? Nah. It’s really not. Hell, I’d bet money your  _ assistant  _ even thinks you’re straight.” He shot Reeve a wink and a fingergun. “My gaydar’s just that damn good. Also I remember you kinda unclenching the first time you saw me and Rude do a PDA on your couch. So... no boyfriend either?”

“No, not... not currently.” Reeve took a drink off his beer. 

Reno made a noise into his bottle that might have been a laugh, but not a malicious one. “Been a while, huh?”

The less said about that, the better. “You could say that.”

“Dang. No wonder you’re all uptight and shit. No offense, just... when’s the last time you got a hug, even?”

“Yesterday!”

“Your mom doesn’t count, dingus! I meant from a  _ guy.” _

Was he really having this conversation? With  _ Reno?  _ Oh dear God. “I--I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

Reno sat back, looking way too pleased with himself. “Too late. You just did. What’s the deal, though? Again: you’re a good-looking guy, you’re nice, you got your shit together, you got a good job, you oughta have hot guys throwing themselves at your fuckin’ feet everywhere you go so... what’s the problem? You get out in the, uh,  _ community  _ at all?”

“I tried.” Reeve breathed out a sheepish little laugh. “About ninety percent of the  _ community  _ is really loud bars and dance clubs and stuff like that and the other ten... I don’t fit.”

“Understandable. I mean, I  _ love  _ the dance clubs and shit but sure. Rude’s kinda the same way as you. He goes out with me and he likes dancing and stuff but he’s like... he kinda feels like he doesn’t belong there. Anyway. I get you.”

“I just--I haven’t really been looking lately anyway. Too busy,” Reeve said. Which wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t really the whole truth, either.

He hadn’t been looking. That much was true. And his recent promotion came with a hell of a lot of responsibility that he was still adjusting to, that was also true. But the “lately” part... well, that wasn’t quite so true. 

He’d dated a few guys over the past few years, sure. A couple of them, more than once. But the same damn thing just kept happening, and he was tired of it. Tired of going through the same routine every damn time. Tired of listening to a guy describe all the things he was passionate about in his life, only to get a weird look and  _ oh, that’s... interesting  _ when it was his turn. Tired of wondering whether he could invite a guy up to his apartment and cook him dinner without him expecting something else after. 

Most of all, he was tired of feeling rushed into doing things he would much rather wait for and tired of feeling like garbage the next morning if he gave in and tired of feeling like an asshole if he didn’t.

So... he quit looking. If something was meant to happen, he thought, it would happen in its own time.

And yes. While he cringed at the thought of indulging in a one night stand he knew he would instantly regret, it had still been entirely too damn long since Reeve had gotten so much as a hug from another man.

But Reno didn’t need to know that. 

“So... girls aren’t your thing either, I take it,” Reeve said in an attempt to change the subject or at least redirect the conversation away from his own issues.

“Ehh... used to be? Kind of?” Reno chuckled a little. “Actually my thing  _ used  _ to be ‘whoever’s interested,’ but...”

“But now Rude’s your thing.”

“Damn right he is.” Reno picked up his beer and held it out, and Reeve clinked his against it just because. “He thought he was straight.” He took a long drink, looking kind of smug as he did. “...till he met me.”

“You really love him, don’t you?” This. This, right here. Watching Reno go all mushy around the edges at the mere mention of his partner. This made the inappropriate subjects and the nicknames and the stolen beer worth it. “How long have you been together, anyway?”

“I love that guy  _ so fuckin’ much.”  _ Reno took another long drink and shot Reeve a thumbs-up with his free hand. “We’ve been  _ partners,  _ nudge nudge wink wink air quotes, almost as long as we’ve been working partners. The boss was, uh... not real crazy about that at first.”

Huh. That didn’t track. Especially considering the way Tseng had been sort of flirting with him. “He seems pretty okay with it now.”

“Oh yeah,  _ now  _ he is, but back then...” He took a drink. “Okay. Listen. Before I say one more word about this I want to make it absolutely crystal fuckin’ clear that it was not, I repeat,  _ not _ the gay shit he had a problem with. That wasn’t even on his radar. He was just worried about us, like... not being able to keep our work life and our  _ life _ life separated if we got together.” 

“Right...” Okay.  _ That  _ tracked. “We kind of talked about that,” Reeve said. “How he always puts his uniform on to do work stuff, even just paperwork or whatever, and then he--”

“Loses the gloves and does  _ that--"  _ Reno gestured with his bottle, indicating Reeve's loosened tie and undone top button--"with his tie to break out of it. Yep. He’s real big on us not bringing our work home, y’know? And I get where he’s coming from, he’s totally right, in this line of work you gotta be able to do that or you’ll fuckin’ lose it. It’s just...” He shrugged. “Sometimes you see something you didn’t ever want to see, or you gotta do something you didn’t ever want to do, and it just kinda follows you home whether you want it to or not. So... when it follows Rude home, I’m there for him. When it follows me home, he’s there for me. We can talk to each other about shit we can’t tell  _ anyone _ else. And that’s what we told Tseng, and once he figured out it actually worked for us he backed off.” He gestured vaguely with his bottle. “Shit, it’s been working just fine for what, three years now so... y’know.” Reno was quiet for a long moment. Then he laughed into his beer. “Sorry. I got kinda grimdark there, huh?”

“No, it’s okay.” It was. It was also a little unsettling. "Does Tseng... does it ever follow  _ him  _ home?"

"He’s real good at leaving it, but... yeah, sometimes.” Reno shrugged and gestured with his bottle again. “When it does he's smart about it. He knows when he needs to talk it out and he ain't shy about calling me or Rude up to do it." Reno considered that for a moment. "Why? You worried about him now?"

No point in even trying to lie or deflect. "Well, yeah."

"See, shit like this is why I can't believe you're fuckin' single. No, he’s a big boy, he knows when he can handle his own shit and when he can’t and he’s got us watching his six. He’s okay.”

“Okay. Good.” It was harder not to sound relieved that time. Also, Reeve wasn’t trying nearly as hard. He was certain Reno picked up on it, but no roasting seemed forthcoming. “Sorry.  _ I  _ got kinda grimdark there.”

“Understandable. Anyway, what the fuck were we talking about before we got all grimdark and shit? Oh, right.  _ Things. _ You want to talk about someone with a  _ reeeeeeal  _ interesting thing...”

_ Oh shit,  _ Reeve thought, bracing for something to do with farm animals or power tools or who the hell knew what.

“I have this, uh... friend. And his thing?” Reno took a drink. “Is _nothing_. Or like... maybe not _nothing_ nothing, I know he’s got _some_ kind of a thing for guys, but not like... a bed thing.”

“Yeah,” Reeve said, nodding. “That’s valid.”

“Didn’t say it wasn’t. I mean God knows me and Rude are always down for a trip to the bone zone but--”

Of course he said that right when Reeve took a nice long drink off his beer. Reeve did not know how he kept that beer in his mouth, or how he kept it from coming out anywhere else. “I did  _ not  _ need to hear that!” he spluttered once he’d swallowed it and was reasonably sure it had gone down the right pipe. 

Reno just beamed at him, clearly entirely too pleased with himself. “I am  _ just saying,  _ I am into it. But also! I get that not everyone is. You feel me?”

Okay. That was a good way to put it and the words  _ bone zone  _ weren’t involved, so Reeve nodded again. “Yeah, I get you. Same here, I guess. I  _ like _ it, but...” He gestured vaguely with his beer bottle. “It’s... not the main objective for me. So yeah, I totally respect that.”

A weird little flash of...  _ something  _ crossed Reno’s face. Like a little  _ aha.  _ But whatever it was, he didn’t explain it. He just gestured back with  _ his  _ beer bottle. “Cool. Love being on the same page with you like this, buddy. Makes me feel all smart and shit. Anyway, like... I don’t know if he doesn’t do anything at all ever, or he just does some things, or what. But hey, that’s not for me to know anyway, costs me zero gil to mind my business and all that.” He started to take another drink, then paused. “Hang on. When’d the boss tell you about his uniform thing?”

“The morning after the first time you broke in here?” Reeve waved a hand. “I was messing around in the fab shop, and he was up there doing some paperwork or something and he came by, and... we just kinda talked for a while.”

Reno belly-crawled up to hang off the arm of the couch again, eyes sparkling. 

_ “Oh?”  _ he said, and that single syllable, those two tiny letters and that one tiny question mark, that was more than enough to project the most vivid image onto Reeve’s mental movie screen: a tasty-looking steak sitting on a spring-loaded plate in the middle of a giant gleaming bear trap, surrounded by trip wires attached to various projectile weapons, and all of that surrounded by garish blinking neon arrows and signs reading  _ obvious trap.  _ “What  _ else  _ did you--”

Reno’s phone rang. 

He huffed out a petulant little sigh, rolled over, and answered it. Reeve made a mental note to send whoever was calling him a giant fruit basket and possibly a bottle of something expensive.

“Hey, partner. You fired yet? ...aw, dammit. Guess you gotta get up in the morning after all. ...huh? Hanging out with Lord Business. Where are  _ you?  _ ...’kay. ...yeah, I got the car. ...no, I’m good, I just had one. Hey, you wanna go out for... aw hell yeah, exactly what I was gonna say. Be right there. Bye.” Reno hung up and blew a halfhearted raspberry. “Man, right when shit was starting to get interesting. All right, chief. You’re out of the hot seat.” He scooted up to hang over the arm of the couch again, this time flashing Reeve an upside-down grin.  _ Obvious trap _ . “For now.” And with that, he hopped up off the couch, drained his beer, and carried the empty off to the kitchen for proper disposal.

_ Whew. _

Reeve heard the pantry door open. He heard an empty bottle drop into the recycling bin. He thought he heard Reno snicker a little, but he didn’t think too much of it. He didn’t think too much of it when Reno came out of the kitchen and shot him another wink and fingergun, either. He certainly wasn’t thinking about the fact that the recycling bin was in the pantry. The same pantry that housed the liquor shelf.

He didn’t think much of it until Reno went out the door, then paused and stuck his head back in. “Oh, just one more thing.”

And then he thought about it. 

Oh, hell.

“Couldn’t help but notice you got a new bottle up there,” Reno said, beaming like he’d found a little piece of hidden treasure. “Thought that was, uh... too ‘smoky’ for you?” And before Reeve could say or do anything about it, he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original draft had several more uses of the phrase "bone zone," one of which was Reeve begging Reno to stop saying it. 
> 
> Naturally, Reno counted getting Reeve to say it as a victory.
> 
> (also: yes, he totally ships it but never mind that)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He and Reeve texted back and forth now and then, every few days, every time Reno and/or Rude showed up on his couch. Mostly, he just gave the usual assurance that they hadn’t broken anything or mentioned that Rude had been nice enough to bring his own beer or that sort of thing. Every couple of days, Reeve gently pestered him about that explanation he was still owed. That was starting to turn into a bit of a game between them, Tseng deflecting and Reeve still trying to coax the answer out of him.
> 
> He was enjoying it. And he really did want to spend some more time getting to know the man. And Reeve seemed to want to spend some more time getting to know him. And that bothered him.
> 
> It usually didn’t. Usually.
> 
> Reeve was... unusual.

The thing about swimming was, you couldn’t really think of much else while you were doing it. 

A runner could just kind of turn on autopilot, especially on a treadmill, and let their mind wander. So could a cyclist, to some degree. 

But a swimmer just had too much to keep track of to worry about anything else. When to breathe (and, more importantly, when _not_ to). How many strokes until the next turn. How far they’ve traveled underwater after that turn. How many laps down. How many left. There was little, if any, room for stray thoughts in the water.

That was one of the things Reeve liked most about it, one of the reasons why he’d kept doing it even after he had to drop off the team in college, one of the reasons he still did it. Nothing cleared his head quite the way a good swim first thing in the morning did.

And yet.

That particular morning, he found a few stray thoughts trying to creep in around the edges. 

He hadn’t confessed anything embarrassing to Reno yesterday. Had he? Not really, nothing that wasn’t an echo of Reno’s own sentiments?

Turn. Push off.

What was all that about his friend, anyway? His friend whose _thing_ was nothing. Why even bring that up? 

Turn. Push off.

Had Reno been testing him? Trying to gauge his reaction to the concept? What possible purpose could that serve? Why the hell did Reno look at him like that when he mentioned Tseng dropping by the fab shop to talk to him?

Turn. Push off.

_What_ else _did you talk about, hmmmmmm?_ That’s what he would have said if Rude hadn’t called him right at that particular moment _(note to self,_ Reeve thought in the relatively calm underwater seconds after a turn, _get a six-pack of what he brought last time)_ but why that tone? Why that _grin?_ Why the hell was he so interested in--

Reeve flailed to a stop, right in the middle of the pool, and stayed there idly treading water while he did the math.

The part about the _friend_ didn’t fit, but the rest of it? The _what else did you talk about?_ The smartass comment about that new bottle of Tseng’s favorite bourbon on his liquor shelf? The question about whether he was currently seeing anyone? The way Reno jumped to reassure him when he expressed that concern about Tseng’s work following him home?

_See, shit like this is why I can’t believe you’re fuckin’ single,_ Reno had said about that.

“Oh _God,”_ Reeve groaned, wishing for a moment he could just sink to the bottom of the pool and stay there forever.

* * *

The only thing that kept Reeve from driving himself crazy with that for the rest of the day was the volume of actual work he had to do. None of it involved face-to-face meetings with any other human beings. All of it involved spreadsheets and data and numbers and construction timelines and things that made _sense_ and kept his brain too busy to worry about the possibility that Reno had gone and reported that whole weird conversation straight to Tseng. 

_Hey boss,_ he nevertheless imagined that conversation, or perhaps that e-mail starting, _I broke into Reeve’s place again yesterday and we talked about some wild shit when he got home, did you know he’s a) very gay, b) very single, c) very concerned about your well-being, and d) buying bourbon he doesn’t like but knows you do? What do you think_ that _all adds up to, nudge nudge wink wink hmmm?_

Actually, no, he didn’t want to imagine any more of that conversation, please and thank you. Because as it was, every time his phone made a noise he was certain it was Tseng texting to call him out on that.

_Friendly reminder,_ a voice that sounded relatively reasonable piped up in Reeve’s head, _he_ was _kind of flirting with you. Would it really be that bad if Reno happened to put that particular bug in his ear?_

_Unfriendly reminder,_ he thought back at it, _it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s kind of flirted with me and then got weird at me when I didn’t meet his expectations. I am trying to work. Can we please do this later?_

_Okay, but consider this,_ the voice of reason went on. _He’s clearly interested in getting to know you better as a person, not just as a--a potential conquest or whatever. He thinks your hobbies are, quote, “fascinating,” end quote. He’s paid enough attention to you to SOMEHOW figure out what you drink without even looking at your liquor shelf and he keeps holding that over your head, waiting for you to figure out how the hell he did it. How the hell DID he do it, anyway?_

This was stupid. Ramuh on a goddamn raft, he wasn’t a teenager. He was a thirty-year-old grown man with two engineering degrees and a very important job and a key to the executive washroom and a ridiculously overhuge office and an assistant and he was not supposed to be overthinking a damn _crush_ like this.

His phone pinged and he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. When he brought himself to look, he found a text from the optometrist. They’d had a cancellation, they said, and did he want to move his appointment up a few hours? 

Yeah, good idea. He’d gone a few years on this prescription and there was a solid chance he was going to come out of that exam with a new one. The sooner he got that over with, the sooner he could order his contacts and get glasses to hold him until they came in, the sooner he could get back to work like a grown man with two engineering degrees and a very important job _et cetera._ “Hey, Cait?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“Listen in for a sec.” He pushed a button on the intercom. “Deanne?”

“Yes, sir?”

“That one o’clock appointment for tomorrow got moved up to ten and there might be some other stuff involved afterwards so... I _probably_ won’t be in until after lunch.”

“Got it. Did you tell your cat?”

“He’s eavesdropping.”

“Oh, good. Cait, remind him first thing in the morning, okay?”

“Okay! I’ll remember that.”

“Hey!” Reeve tapped his phone with a fingertip to boop Cait’s avatar on the nose. “Who’s your boss, anyway?”

“You’re my boss, boss! But you said to listen to Deanne ‘cause she remembers stuff you don’t.”

_“Ouch.”_ Reeve pretended not to notice the muffled giggling from the intercom. “He’s going to be a nightmare when he gets a body, isn’t he?”

“You’re the one who wrote him, sir. Anything else?"

"No, that's it. Thanks. Go back to sleep, Cait."

"Okay!"

_Look,_ the voice of reason went on, now that all the immediate issues had been dealt with and it was free to harass Reeve some more, _just... ask him. You’ve told him you’re not great at social stuff. He’ll understand if you say something to the effect of “listen, I’m picking up some signals that I’m not sure you’re actually sending, are you interested in me or am I just reading this wrong?” But again, he is definitely interested, just my two gil._

And that was all well and good. Except: _if he_ is _interested, which I have ample reason to doubt, how long is that interest going to hold outside of the bedroom? If this ends up being just another thing that fizzles out when the third date doesn’t end with... I don’t want that. Not with him. I’d rather just... not._

The voice of reason had nothing to say to that for a while. Long enough for Reeve to get some more actual work done.

_Have you considered,_ it piped up again after he took care of some e-mails that had been festering in his inbox longer than he liked, _that there might be a reason why Reno made a point of telling you about his friend whose_ thing _was nothing?_

Reeve followed that thread and felt his brain throw several fatal error messages when he made the connection.

No. That was... no. Not possible. His eyes. His hands. The way he walked, the way he moved, the way he carried himself, the sound of his voice--the man was six feet of raw sensuality in a perfectly tailored black suit. There was no way in hell that Reno’s nameless friend whose thing was _nothing_ could possibly be Tseng.

...right?

* * *

Not for the first time, Tseng went home feeling a little guilty that night.

Performance reviews. Expense reports. Equipment requisitions. If he’d known that being one of the most intimidating people in Midgar would generate so much damn _paperwork..._ well. Paperwork, at least, was just dull and boring. He knew better than anyone how much worse this job could be than just dull and boring.

He’d been thinking. 

It wasn’t as if Reeve’s apartment was terribly far out of his way. All he really had to do was take a right at that first light instead of the left that would take him back to his own building, and then head for that sleek steel-and-glass high-rise. Pull into the parking garage. Flash his ID at the doorman and make some mild noises about official business. Ride an elevator up thirty floors. Force a lock. And then make himself comfortable and wait. And it certainly wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ to visit again.

He still hadn’t been back. 

He usually didn’t have second thoughts about this sort of thing. About the surprise visits, about taking an interest in getting to know someone better, about any of it. But this time, he did.

He and Reeve texted back and forth now and then, every few days, every time Reno and/or Rude showed up on his couch. Mostly, he just gave the usual assurance that they hadn’t broken anything or mentioned that Rude had been nice enough to bring his own beer or that sort of thing. Every couple of days, Reeve gently pestered him about that explanation he was still owed. That was starting to turn into a bit of a game between them, Tseng deflecting and Reeve still trying to coax the answer out of him.

He was enjoying it. And he really did want to spend some more time getting to know the man. And Reeve seemed to want to spend some more time getting to know _him._ And that bothered him.

It usually didn’t. Usually.

Reeve was... unusual.

On some other occasions when he did take an interest in a man, and when their conversations started to creep beyond the boundaries of superficiality and into deeper, more personal territory, Tseng could bend the truth about what he did for a living. _Security consultant_ was a safe, adequately vague answer to that question, not entirely untrue, and it carried enough weight of confidentiality that his dates tended not to try and dig deeper. They never had time to, anyway. Eventually, maybe after the first date, maybe after the second or third, they came to the realization that the electric fence of Tseng’s physical boundaries encompassed far too small a safe play area to keep them interested. And usually, that would be the last he heard from them. A couple of them heard _no_ and interpreted it as _convince me,_ which didn’t go well for them, but most of the time they just drifted away on their own. And that was fine. He never got too attached to them anyway. They were rarely more than placeholders to let him go through the motions of socializing outside of the workplace like a normal human being. Warm bodies to fill the seat next to his at whatever community production he’d decided to take in. Morsels of human interaction to take the edge off when his solitary lifestyle became a little too much.

Tseng had only really sat down and talked to Reeve twice, only once without Reno and Rude in the room. Already, he could tell the man would be more than capable of satisfying his appetite for connection in a way those placeholder dates never could. As for the physical component... well, given what Tseng knew about him, there was a good chance he’d be willing to work with that. He was thoughtful. Respectful. He kept his hands to himself. No “casual” touches on Tseng’s shoulder or arm or back. Just a couple of handshakes. It might be worth a try. 

But Reeve wasn’t stupid. He knew _security_ barely scratched the surface of what this job could be when it wasn’t just a pile of paperwork. He knew who Tseng was and what the Turks did. Not all of it, of course, but more than the average placeholder did. If he was really so naive as to think _security_ was the end of it, he hadn’t been paying attention and that was not Tseng’s problem to solve.

This shouldn’t have bothered him the way it did. 

The thought of Reeve finding out exactly what kind of things he’d seen and done in the line of duty shouldn’t have made him uneasy. Certainly not while he was sitting here, in his office, at his desk, in uniform, on company time.

As easy as it would be to take that right turn and let himself into Reeve’s apartment and wait, he thought, it would be even easier to visit him in his office instead. Sometime between ten and four. Squarely on company time, strictly in uniform. It would be easier that way. Apologize for sending signals he shouldn’t have sent. For playing with him. Promise to keep a safe distance going forward. 

As for that explanation he still owed... tell him he’d peeked after all. He didn’t want to lie, but telling Reeve the truth at _that_ point would defeat the entire purpose of that conversation.

Tseng finished up what he needed to do. He collected his things, turned out the lights, and headed down to the parking garage. He stowed his bag in the trunk of his car, sat in the driver’s seat, and locked the doors.

He tugged his gloves off and tossed them into the empty passenger seat. He yanked his tie loose and undid his top button. He sat back and shut his eyes and put his work self away for the evening.

Tomorrow. 

No point dragging this out any longer than he had to. He’d do it tomorrow.

* * *

Just as Reeve expected: his annual date with The Machine What Blows In Your Eyes ended with a new prescription. 

And that was fine. He got his prescription, ordered his contacts, went to the one-hour place to order his glasses, had lunch outside of the Shinra building for once, picked up his glasses, and was back in his office by one. By the time he was ready to head home, he figured, he would be more or less used to his new prescription and everything would be fine.

This, he realized not an hour later when it became abundantly clear that the process would not be as painless as he’d hoped and he found himself desperately rooting through his desk drawers in search of aspirin, had been a mistake.

He didn’t speak optometrist. The numbers and symbols on his prescription might as well have been Ancient glyphs and he wasn’t interested enough to research it. How much more nearsighted could he get in the year since his last exam, anyway?

More nearsighted than he thought, apparently. And he’d left his old contacts in the car. And the thought of getting up, getting on an elevator, and going down to the parking garage to get them and then coming all the way back up here kind of made him want to perish.

Three drawers and still not a single aspirin or similar substance. _Dammit._

Deanne. She had a purse. Women kept all kinds of stuff in purses, right? She’d have a couple aspirin in there. She had to. Yes. Good plan. Excellent plan. He reached for the intercom to ask her, but before he could touch the button it pinged and that sharp little noise knocked that excellent plan right out of his head.

“Sir? Tseng is here asking to speak to you, are you free?”

“Wh--” Oh God. He was here? _Now?_ “I--sure, I can see him.” He tried to sound normal. He wasn’t sure if _normal_ was even a setting he still had. And he did not remember to ask about the damn aspirin. 

God. Of all the days--he ran a hand through his hair and blew out an exasperated little breath. Today? Now? _Now,_ when he felt like his brain was trying to jackhammer its way out of his forehead, _now_ Tseng decided to come say hello?

His office door opened. Tseng stepped through and took maybe two steps closer to Reeve’s desk. He was all business right now. Gloves on, tie secured. Of course he was on duty, it was after all business hours. 

Tseng opened his mouth to say something. Reeve didn’t know what he might be about to say. But he looked up before it could come out, looked Reeve right in the eyes, and... whatever he was about to say, he didn’t. 

“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” he said instead.

“I usually don’t.” Reeve rubbed his forehead, desperately trying to will the pain away so he could give Tseng his undivided attention. “I usually wear contacts, but... new prescription. As in, ‘today’ new. I’m not used to it yet and it’s... kind of doing a number on me right now.”

Tseng still hadn’t moved any closer, or even closed the door. “You’re not feeling well, are you? We can do this another time.” 

“It’s--it’s just a headache.” Reeve shook his head. “It’s fine. Really. ...you wouldn’t happen to have some aspirin or anything like that on you, would you?”

“Sorry, no. I can ask your assistant on the way out if you like.” There was something strange in his voice. Like he was caught somewhere between on-duty and off-duty. “I came to tell you...” Then he shook his head a little, like he was trying to clear it. 

He turned around and shut the door.

He didn’t move, or talk, or anything for a while. 

“How much do you trust me?” he finally asked, and that was such a strange question that Reeve couldn’t even formulate a proper answer for it. “Enough to let me try something?”

_“Please_ try something,” Reeve whimpered. 

Tseng turned back from the door, tie loose, top button undone. He laid his gloves on the corner of Reeve’s desk, slid around behind his chair, and ever so gently and carefully took his glasses off and set them on the desk.

“Close your eyes. Try to relax.” His voice was deep and soft and soothing and it felt so nice in Reeve’s ears that he couldn’t do anything other than go along with it. “Where does it hurt the most?”

“My... my forehead, mostly.”

“All right. Let’s see...”

Reeve felt warm, gentle fingers on his forehead and strong thumbs rubbing slow circles over his temples and he couldn’t have stopped the whimper that came out of him if he’d bothered to try. 

“Is this helping?”

“Uh huh.”

It was. Dear God, it was. 

Reeve had no idea how long this went on. His brain just jettisoned his entire understanding of the concept of linear time right out of his ears and the only thing that mattered was Tseng’s long fingers smoothing the strain out of his forehead and his temples and his scalp, holy _shit_ where the hell did he learn how to do that, was that a Turk thing or just something he picked up in his free time--

“There’s, ah...” The pads of two fingers slid outward along the ridge of Reeve’s eyebrows, like Tseng was smoothing the lumps out of a clay sculpture. “You’re holding a lot of tension here.”

“Mm.” Surprising? Absolutely not.

Tseng’s fingers combed backwards through his hair, short nails lightly scratching along his scalp, making it tingle. Then he gave the back of Reeve’s neck a tentative squeeze and hissed in a sharp breath, like he’d touched a hot stove burner. “That’s...” He slid his hands down to Reeve’s shoulders and squeezed again. “Relax your shoulders.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re--oh God.” Tseng squeezed again. “Tell me you’re joking.” 

_Oof._ If he could tell even through Reeve’s jacket, then that probably wasn’t good. “That bad?”

“That bad. It’s like massaging a file cabinet. How do you _function_ like--” Tseng rested his hands on Reeve’s shoulders. “You need to get that seen to. You go to the gym in the building, don’t you? There’s a perfectly good massage therapist _right there.”_

“I know.” Reeve shrugged, and maybe it was his imagination but he thought he felt Tseng squeeze his shoulders again. “I’m just... I’ve been busy.” He cleared his throat, tried once again to sound normal, had a feeling he didn’t succeed. “You, uh... you said you wanted to tell me something?”

Tseng didn’t answer that. Not for a long, long time, and Reeve was starting to think he shouldn’t have asked. “I... I did, actually.” There was an odd strain in his voice. “I wanted to apologize. I’ve... been meaning to come visit you again, just...”

“Busy?” 

“Busy.” That was definitely a squeeze. “Would you be all right with me coming over this evening to help you with this?”

Reeve’s eyes snapped open. This was _not_ the turn he expected this conversation to take. “Uh--”

“...and I’ve just made you tense up even more.” Tseng let out a breathy little laugh. “No, it’s...” He was quiet again, but the silence felt lighter this time. “I won’t ask for anything in return. If... if you want I can explain later but... for now let’s just say that’s something you won’t have to worry about from me.”

Was this happening? 

Was this _actually_ happening right now!?

“Okay,” Reeve said, because he didn’t know what the hell else to say.

* * *

_So much for keeping a safe distance,_ Tseng told himself in the elevator down. He didn’t particularly like his tone. _Now what?_

Now what, indeed.

The first step, of course, was admitting that he had a problem.

The problem, of course, was that he genuinely liked Reeve and it was his own damn fault. 

That shouldn’t have been a problem. Reno and Rude liked the man too, if the amount of time they’d been spending in his apartment was any indication. Or maybe they just liked the fact that he was the highest-ranking person in the company who’d tolerate a little recreational breaking and entering and had the nicest apartment they could invade and he didn’t complain when they drank all of his beer--

Ah, shit. Right.

Tseng took his phone out of his pocket and fired off a quick text:

_If you’re thinking about visiting Reeve tonight, don’t._

The first reply came almost immediately: a single thumbs-up emoji from Rude.

The second was taking far too long, and Tseng knew Reno well enough to get the distinct feeling that he was about to regret this.

_Why? What's up?_

Far too long a pause for such a short reply. Well. It wouldn’t do any harm to tell them a little, Tseng supposed.

_He’s not feeling well. I’ll check in on him later._

Another pause, far too long. 

_:D_

He should have left it. He should have put his phone back in his pocket. He did neither of these things.

_All right. Use your words._

_Just thinkin, I was over there a couple days ago & he said some reeeeeal interesting shit. Didn’t even have to ask him anything too embarrassing :D _

_I changed my mind. Stop using words._

_Just sayin, he’s a good guy & he’s def into u. Give it a chance. _

_Reno, how much does it cost you to mind your business?_

_0 gil but joke’s on u, I’m overdrawn._

Honestly, Tseng didn’t know what he’d been expecting.

He knew Reno meant well, in his own aggravating, kind of juvenile way. But that did nothing in the way of helping him figure out a solution for this problem.

_Have you considered,_ said a voice in Tseng’s head that sounded far too reasonable, _that this might not actually be a problem,_ per se? _Or are you really satisfied with a series of interchangeable placeholders?_

Dammit.

_He’s easy to talk to. Easy to listen to. Easy to just..._ be with. _When’s the last time you remember having a real conversation outside the workplace that didn’t leave you exhausted? Feeling like you’ve spent the evening tiptoeing through a minefield? When, for that matter, is the last time you remember going out on a date and not wondering if he’ll try anything you’ll put him in traction for?_

_When’s the last time you remember_ respecting _one of your dates the way you respect him?_

No. Tseng definitely did not care for his own tone. Not one bit.

_That’s the issue, isn’t it? You actually_ respect _him. You respected him almost from the moment you met him. Every new thing you learn about him makes you respect him even more. You never thought of him as another disposable placeholder. You saw him as an equal and you were still interested. And that scared the hell out of you._

_So you decided to cut it off at the quick. You had yourself convinced that you were just going to walk into his office and shut it all down. Neat, clean, surgically precise, done. Just like you’ve done so many times before._

_Then you looked him in the eyes and you couldn’t do it._

_And now you’re really standing here asking yourself how you’re going to solve this “problem,” when what you should be asking yourself is: why are you treating it like a problem at all?_

He refused to dignify any of that with a response. _Company time, dammit._

The elevator opened onto his floor, and Tseng made his way back to the office. Rude sat at the conference table, working on whatever he was working on. Reno was... 

“Where’s your partner?” Tseng asked, expecting one of the usual answers: _the vending machine. The can. Not my week to watch him, boss._

Instead, Rude shrugged. “Sent him out for donuts.”

“At three in the afternoon?” Tseng raised an eyebrow. “It’s going to take him a while to find anyone still serving them.”

“That was the point. Had a feeling you needed to think out loud.” He still had his sunglasses on, as he always did. But Tseng had known the man long enough to tell when he was making eye contact, and he definitely felt eye contact. “I’m listening.”

Tseng thought about deflecting, because of course he did, but... no. He knew better than to try and bullshit his way out of this, because Reno and Rude both knew him far too well and they both knew when he needed to vent. And if he did try to bullshit his way out of this, he would find himself being sat down and lovingly interrogated by _both of them_ and Tseng had watched them play good cop/bad cop enough times to not want to be on the receiving end of that treatment. Rude, at least, would keep his commentary to himself until his input was called for, and when it was called for he would deliver it in the fewest, clearest words possible.

And, he supposed, a second opinion wouldn’t hurt.

* * *

As always, Rude was the most patient and attentive listener anyone could ask for. And when Tseng was done, he just sat there quietly for a while, nodding as he processed all of that information.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Sorry, boss. Reno’s right.”

That oh-so-reasonable voice in Tseng’s head said nothing, but he definitely did not care for that smug look it was giving him.

* * *

So here was the burning question of the day:

What the hell do you wear when a really attractive guy is coming over for the express purpose of giving you a neck rub and has assured you he’s not expecting anything in return?

Not exactly the kind of question Reeve could call his mom up to ask. He briefly considered it anyway, then asked himself what the hell he was thinking.

Something comfortable. Comfortable but not sloppy. That sounded about right? And doable? His oldest, softest pair of jeans. A good T-shirt. Unbuttoned flannel shirt over it. No shoes, but totally barefoot seemed kind of tacky. He didn’t own a pair of slippers, so... casual socks? There. That was both comfortable and presentable. 

Should he order some food? Should he cook? Would he be in any condition to cook when Tseng was done with him? The man had worked enough of a miracle on his head to get him through the rest of the day, was he even going to be able to move by the time Tseng was done with his shoulders? Did he even know what kind of food Tseng liked? Hmm. Best to hold off on that, then. Dammit, this was supposed to help him relax but how the hell was he supposed to relax when--

The doorbell rang. This did not help Reeve relax at all.

He’d sort of half expected Tseng to just let himself in, and figured this must be someone else. And when he opened the door he thought, just for a moment, that it _was_ someone else.

It occurred to Reeve that he’d never seen Tseng out of uniform. _Really_ out of uniform. Never seen the man in civilian clothes. Not gym clothes, not Casual Friday clothes, nothing but that black suit.

He still wore black. Jeans, long-sleeved knit shirt, sporty-casual shoes, probably his socks too, all black. But this wasn’t the same severe sharp black of his uniform. This was... coffee house black. Used bookstore-browsing black. Talking theater at two in the morning over bourbon black.

(Reeve would normally call it “hipster black” but calling it that when Tseng was wearing it seemed a little like blasphemy)

“Uh,” Reeve said. He shook himself to his senses. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Tseng gave him a smile and--was he looking Reeve’s outfit over too? “How’s your head?”

“Better, thanks, I, uh--” Oh. Right. _Let him in._ He stepped aside and gestured towards the living room. “Can I get you a drink, or...”

“Not yet. I might trouble you for one later, but... business to take care of first.” Tseng sat down on the couch. He hadn’t brought anything with him. No bag, nothing like that. “Is here all right?”

“Sure.” God. This was really happening, wasn’t it? Reeve sat down next to him and took his glasses off, laying them on the coffee table. “Should I, uh...” He plucked at his flannel. “Lose this?”

“Mm... it might help, if you’re comfortable with that. But it’s not necessary.” 

_If you’re comfortable with that._

Reeve considered that for a moment, then decided that yes, he was in fact comfortable with that. He shrugged out of his flannel shirt and laid it on the coffee table. Tseng did not appear to be mentally undressing him any further. He just nodded and shifted around, turning to lean against the arm of the couch and face him.

“Turn around. Back to me.”

This was really happening.

Reeve turned around, back to Tseng, pulling his feet up onto the couch to sit cross-legged. He tried to relax. He tried his very best to relax. He still flinched, just a little, at the first touch of Tseng’s hands on his shoulders. 

He didn’t rub, or squeeze, or anything. Not yet. He just laid those warm hands on Reeve’s shoulders and let them rest there.

“I should warn you,” he said, his voice as soft and soothing as it had been earlier that day. “There might be spots where... well, it might feel worse before it feels better. If it’s too much, or you need a break, tell me and I’ll back off. Or stop. Whatever you ask me to.” His hands tightened. One gentle squeeze. “But if you can ride it out, I promise it’ll be worth it.”

Reeve nodded. “Okay.”

“Now. Let’s see...”

For a while, Tseng’s hands just sort of roamed over Reeve’s shoulders and neck. A little squeeze here. A little tentative prodding with fingertips or thumbs there. Every once in a while Tseng would make a soft little noise of concern. 

“All right,” he finally said, as if he’d come up with a plan of attack. “Back straight, head forward as far as you comfortably can.”

Reeve liked to think he was a moderately flexible guy. He stretched, before he got in the pool and after he got out of it. When he had time he took the occasional dip in the hot tub and even made sure to sit where a jet would hit him in the back. He should have been able to bow his head more than this. But before he could say anything to that effect, he felt one of Tseng’s hands firm up on his shoulder, and the other press gently against the back of his head. That did little to move it, but he did feel a nice stretch in the back of his neck.

Tseng made another little concerned noise and let off the pressure. His thumbs slipped under Reeve’s hair, dug into the tight muscles in the back of his neck, sort of walking up either side of his spine--

_“Ah!”_

Tseng stopped where he was, let off the pressure just a little. “And... that hurt.”

“Yeah.” It did. It hurt like hell. It felt like Tseng had hit a knot that somehow had at least four different bundles of nerves in completely unrelated parts of his body tied up in it, but he couldn’t tell exactly _where._ No, that definitely wasn’t supposed to do that.

“Can you breathe through it?”

“I--I’ll try.”

Tseng’s thumb pressed into that knotted muscle again, rubbing slow circles over it, trying to convince it to let go. A little lighter this time, at first, and that was... tolerable. A little harder, and that was less tolerable.

“Breathe,” Tseng reminded him. “In through your nose, out through your mouth. Slow and deep.”

He tried. It wasn’t easy. Concentrating on Tseng’s other hand, warm and soothing on his shoulder, and his equally warm and soothing voice made it a little easier. It still hurt.

Until suddenly... it didn’t anymore.

It ached, a little, once that tight muscle finally relented under heat and pressure and persistence. But Tseng must have felt a change under his fingers too; he pressed his palm against that spot, letting the warmth of his hand chase the remaining soreness away. “Holy _shit,”_ Reeve wheezed, and Tseng rewarded him with a soft laugh.

“Good. See, it does get better. Now... sit up nice and straight...”

Reeve did. Once again, he felt Tseng’s hand grip his shoulder, and his other hand gently press on the back of his head. 

This time, his chin went almost all the way to his chest.

“There, see?” That hand on the back of his head slid around to his forehead. “That’s already better. Now back, until you feel a little stretch in--like that. Good.” The hand moved back to rest on the side of his head. “Now--keep your shoulders down--to the left--”

There was a sound that, in Reeve’s head, sounded not unlike a very short string of firecrackers going off. 

“Well.” Tseng had to take a moment to compose himself after that. Maybe it wasn’t as loud as it sounded inside Reeve’s head, but clearly it was loud enough. “That was, ah... impressive? I hope it felt better than it sounded.”

“Uh huh,” Reeve whimpered.

Leaning his head to the right produced another little series of mildly disturbing snaps, crackles, and pops. Not quite as dramatic as the first, though. 

“Now let’s deal with these,” Tseng said, squeezing Reeve’s shoulders again.

“Mmkay.”

It went on much like this for... Reeve had no idea how long it went on for. Just as he’d almost lose himself in the feel of warm hands on his shoulders, Tseng would find another knot. It would hurt, at first. Rarely bad enough that Reeve needed to tap out, always bad enough to make him yelp a little at first, never a match for Tseng’s fingers or thumbs. Then once it released, his fingers would go on searching for another area that needed attention. Sometimes Tseng would ask him to move something--sit up straight, chest out, shoulders back as far as he could, then curl forward and round his back like a cat. Scrunch his shoulders up as high as he could and then let them drop. Things like that. And every time, he felt something loosen up a little. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this relaxed. He definitely couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this relaxed with another man massaging his shoulders. Of course he still remembered Tseng assuring him he wouldn’t ask for anything in return, but at this point... if he _did..._

Well... maybe. But he’d have to ask very nicely. And he’d need to buy dinner. Maybe a few times. But Reeve would definitely take it under very serious consideration.

At some point, Tseng’s hands stilled on his shoulders.

“Feel better?” he whispered.

His voice. His hands. The scent of his cologne. His very presence, this close. The relief of having weeks, maybe months worth of stockpiled tension coaxed out of his shoulders. It was too much. Too much for Reeve to put together any kind of coherent verbal answer. Too much for him to do anything about it except flop bonelessly backwards against Tseng’s chest.

Tseng made a soft little noise, and for a moment Reeve couldn’t feel his hands on him anymore, and for that moment he felt ice water flush through his veins and he was sure he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life--

And then he felt Tseng’s hands on his shoulders again. 

Then his arms, slowly winding their way around him. 

Then his cheek, pressed warm against Reeve’s temple.

This... this was exactly what Reeve needed right now. Warmth against his back and strong arms around him. Just being held, and nothing expected of him beyond that.

Neither of them said anything, for a very long time. The silence should have been awkward, Reeve thought. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. It was warm and comfortable and perfect, and rather than break it he decided to just close his eyes and enjoy it.

In the end, it was Tseng who broke it.

“I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t offer you a chance to walk away from this,” he said in the careful, measured tone of someone who knew this needed to be said but wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. “You know who I am. You know what I do.” 

“I know.” He did. He didn’t want to think about it too much, certainly not while Tseng was holding him like this, but he knew.

“Please don’t ever ask me about work.” Tseng’s arms tightened around him, like he was trying to shield Reeve from that. “I promise I’m--Reno and Rude all but force me to vent at them when it gets difficult, so I have people to talk to when I need to, but... I can’t ask you to do that for me.”

“That’s reasonable.” It was. He didn’t particularly like that, but he understood it and was willing to respect it.

“And, ah...” Tseng cleared his throat softly. “I should warn you now, before things get to that point...” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m... not into sex.”

Tseng probably didn’t see it, but Reeve’s eyes snapped open at that.

_I don’t want to say ‘told you so,’_ that oh-so-reasonable voice in his head piped up. _But..._

“It’s not to say I don’t enjoy any kind of... physical intimacy, ever. I do. There are some things I like,” Tseng went on. “But there are limits, and... well, I’ve met very few men willing to respect them for very long.”

“Okay,” Reeve said. “I _am_ into it but... short version, this is the opposite of a problem for me. I absolutely respect that.”

“That’s good to know.” Tseng let out a breath that sounded kind of relieved. “We can talk about the long version another time.”

“Of course.” Reeve settled back against Tseng’s chest and let out a breath of his own. A lock of Tseng’s hair spilled down over his shoulder, and he couldn’t help but twine it around his fingers and let it slip free again. “I love your hair,” he said before he could stop himself, and Tseng favored him with a soft laugh. “I’m kind of jealous of it, to be honest.”

“Jealous.” Another warm chuckle against Reeve’s cheek. “Really?”

“Mmhm. I’ve tried to grow mine out but...” He gestured in the general direction of his own hair with his free hand, then let it drop onto one of Tseng’s. “It gets much longer than this and it just goes crazy. Complete disregard for gravity. It’s ridiculous.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation...” Tseng lifted the hand Reeve wasn’t holding and brushed the backs of his knuckles along Reeve’s jaw. “I’m a little jealous of _this._ I tried. Once. Never again.”

Reeve shook his head. “I can’t picture you with a beard, sorry.”

“It’s just as well. The less said about it, the better.”

“All right. We can change the subject.” Reeve snuggled back against Tseng’s shoulder, and Tseng gave him a good solid warm squeeze. “How about... that explanation you still owe me?”

“Oh, come on,” Tseng laughed. “Really?”

“Really. Let’s hear it. How’d you guess what I drink?”

“All right, all right.” Tseng huffed out a sigh and turned his head to nuzzle Reeve’s cheek. “As I said. The Branford cemented it. But there were other things that tipped me off.”

“Such as...?”

“Such as... this.” Tseng let go with one hand and gestured around them, indicating Reeve’s living room. “Your apartment is nice, but you could afford better. The same could be said for your car, your suits, a number of things. All very nice, but not exactly status symbols. You cook for yourself and run your own errands, even though you could afford to pay someone to do those things for you whenever you want. I’d bet any amount of money you change your own oil.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“And I’m fairly sure your cologne comes from the drugstore.”

“Ouch. You’re not wrong, but _ouch.”_

“Don’t ‘ouch’ about it. It works _very_ well with your chemistry. I like it on you. Anyway. I could go on, but you can probably pick up on the pattern.”

Reeve thought he could, but he wanted to listen to Tseng’s voice some more, so he just made a little agreeable noise.

“As for the Branford... you said it yourself. Most people who got their hands on a bottle that valuable would just put it on a shelf. Right about... there.” Tseng gestured at the bookshelf, somewhere right in the center. “They’d put it on display. They wouldn’t appreciate what was inside the bottle. They’d probably never even open it, much less taste it. It would be a conversation piece, something to show off how much they could afford to spend on a bottle of bourbon, and worth nothing more to them.” He wrapped his arm around Reeve’s shoulders again. “Not you, though. I might not have ever known you had it if Reno hadn’t gone rooting around in your pantry. Somehow I doubt you would have pulled it out just to show it off. You appreciate and respect it for what it is, not for how much it’ll impress your guests, and you were all too happy to share it with someone who you thought might appreciate it the way you do. And didn’t you only buy it in the first place at your mom’s suggestion?”

“Got me there,” Reeve murmured, and Tseng nuzzled his cheek again. “So how’d you get Bismarck from all of that?”

“It was that or Nibel Rose. Both are excellent. Pretty much every enthusiast can agree on that much. But they’re not the kind of thing you’d order if you were trying to impress the people around you. They fit the pattern. And based on what you’d already said about your taste... I guessed Bismarck.” Was that a kiss? Just a little one? “You’re not trying to impress anyone. You worked hard to get where you are. You haven’t let it go to your head. You don’t just remember where you came from; you’re _proud_ of it, as well you should be. I can see that in you every time we talk. You’re genuinely, unapologetically _you_ in a way so many people at your level forget how to be. It’s... it’s one of the things I respect about you.”

Reeve breathed out a soft laugh and shook his head. “You’re incredible. You know that?”

“I’ve been told.” That was definitely a kiss, on his cheek. “I try not to let it go to _my_ head.” Tseng’s arms tightened around him, just a little. “I meant to ask... have you had dinner yet?”

“Mm. No.” Reeve started to get up. “I could make something--”

“No.” Tseng did not let him go. “Not tonight, you won’t. Though I’m definitely looking forward to letting you cook for me in the future. No, here, let me order something.” He did let go then, with one hand, to unholster his phone and pull up a delivery app. 

“Well, since you’re not going to let me up, I guess I’ll have to let you.”

“Mmhm. Let’s see... you’ve had a rough day. How about some comfort food? I know a place...” Tseng scrolled down a few screens, tapped on a listing, and held the phone down where Reeve could browse the menu. “Here. The loaded potato soup is to die for. _All_ the bacon.”

“Mmm...” Reeve didn’t want to get up, but his glasses were still on the table and just out of reach. “Need my eyes.”

“Oh, right, sorry--” Tseng shifted behind him, leaned over, and picked them up. “I didn’t realize this was a thing you had to get used to, I always figured you just put them on and see better... lesson learned, I suppose.”

“Yeah, there’s always kind of an adjustment period with a new prescription, but it usually doesn’t hit me like it did today.” Reeve put his glasses back on and scrolled idly through the menu. That potato soup did sound amazing, but he wanted to see what else they offered. “And tomorrow morning I’ll put them on first thing and it’ll probably be fine, just--”

Tseng’s phone pinged. A text popped up at the top of the screen. From Reno. Short enough for the notification bar to show the whole thing.

_Got ur man yet? ;D_

Tseng heaved the soul-deep weary sigh of the absolutely positively utterly _done_ and reached up with his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, as if that was going to somehow unreceive that text. 

“I am going to flense him,” he ground out. 

The text alone made it hard enough to keep a straight face. Tseng’s reaction to it, not to mention his use of a shamefully underutilized and inherently funny word, was just too much and Reeve burst into helpless laughter. The best kind, the kind that made his face and his abs ache, the kind that felt like it swept the cobwebs out of his soul and released a hidden store of air pressure he didn’t even know he’d been holding. 

Tseng held him, and watched him, and eventually relented and laughed a little himself. “Well. All right. I suppose it’s worth it to see you laugh like that. I’m sorry about that, though. I asked them to leave you alone tonight on account of your headache and made the mistake of telling them I’d be over to check on you, and... they’ve been a little, ah... invested. In... us. Reno in particular.”

“...yeah.” Reeve puffed out a little more laughter and shook his head. “That explains a lot, actually.”

“Oh God. Was he doing that with you too? If he made you uncomfortable I really _will_ peel him.”

“No, no, nothing... really embarrassing? He just asked me if I was single, mostly. And...” Reeve waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. It worked out.”

“Mm.” Tseng thought that over and nodded. “True. Dammit. He’s going to expect a raise now, isn’t he? Ah well. Did you decide what you wanted?”

“Yeah.” Reeve scrolled up and tapped that potato soup. “All the bacon is speaking to my soul today. What about you?”

“Ah...” Tseng scrolled through the menu a little more, seemed to waffle between the soup and something in the pasta section, and went back up to the soup. “I think it’s speaking to mine too, actually, and--ah, sit up a second.”

“Don’t want to.”

“Just for a second. Let me lose the shoes. Then you can scoot back and we’ll both be more comfortable.”

Reeve huffed out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. I’ll allow it.”

Yes. That was definitely more comfortable.

One of them was, unfortunately, going to have to get up again when the food came. But for now, Reeve settled back against Tseng’s chest again, and Tseng wrapped both arms around him again, and it was exactly what he needed.


End file.
